Planet Earth: Facts About Its Orbit, Atmosphere & Size

Earth, our home, is the third planet from the sun. It is the only planet known to have an atmosphere containing free
oxygen, oceans of liquid water on its surface, and, of course, life.

Earth is the fifth largest of the planets in the solar system smaller than the four gas giants, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranusand
Neptune, but larger than the three other rocky planets, Mercury, Marsand Venus.

Earth has a diameter of roughly 8,000 miles (13,000 kilometers), and is round because gravity pulls matter into a ball,
although it is not perfectly round, instead being more of an "oblate spheroid" whose spin causes it to be squashed at its
poles and swollen at the equator.

Roughly 71 percent of Earth's surface is covered by water, most of it in the oceans. About a fifth of Earth's atmosphereis
made up of oxygen, produced by plants. While scientists have been studying our planet for centuries, much has been
learned in recent decades by studying pictures of Earth from space.

Orbital characteristics
Earth spins on an imaginary line called an axis that runs from the North Pole to the South Pole, while also orbiting the sun.
It takes Earth 23.439 hours to complete a rotation on its axis, and roughly 365.26 days to complete an orbit around the
sun.

Earth's axis of rotation is tilted in relation to the ecliptic plane, an imaginary surface through Earth's orbit around the sun.
This means the northern and southern hemispheres will sometimes point toward or away from the sun depending on the
time of year, varying the amount of light they receive and causing the seasons.

Earth's orbit is not a perfect circle, but is rather an oval-shaped ellipse, like that of the orbits of all the other planets. Earth
is a bit closer to the sun in early January and farther away in July, although this variation has a much smaller effect than
the heating and cooling caused by the tilt of Earth's axis. Earth happens to lie within the so-called "Goldilocks zone"
around its star, where temperatures are just right to maintain liquid water on its surface.

Orbit & rotation

Some statistics about Earth, according to NASA:

Average distance from the sun: 92,956,050 miles (149,598,262 km)

Perihelion (closest approach to the sun): 91,402,640 miles (147,098,291 km)
Aphelion (farthest distance from the sun): 94,509,460 miles (152,098,233 km)
Length of solar day (single rotation on its axis): 23.934 hours
Length of year (single revolution around the sun): 365.26 days
Equatorial inclination to orbit: 23.4393 degrees

Earth's formation and evolution

Scientists think Earth was formed at roughly the same time as the sun and other planets some 4.6 billion years ago, when
the solar system coalesced from a giant, rotating cloud of gas and dust known as the solar nebula. As the nebula
collapsed because of its gravity, it spun faster and flattened into a disk. Most of the material was pulled toward the center
to form the sun.

Other particles within the disk collided and stuck together to form ever-larger bodies, including Earth. The solar wind from
the sun was so powerful that it swept away most of the lighter elements, such as hydrogen and helium, from the
innermost worlds, rendering Earth and its siblings into small, rocky planets.

Scientists think Earth started off as a waterless mass of rock. Radioactive materials in the rock and increasing pressure
deep within the Earth generated enough heat to melt Earth's interior, causing some chemicals to rise to the surface and
form water, while others became the gases of the atmosphere. Recent evidence suggests that Earth's crust and oceans
may have formed within about 200 million years after the planet had taken shape.

The history of Earth is divided into four eons starting with the earliest, these are the Hadean, Archean, Proterozoic and
Phanerozoic. The first three eons, which together lasted nearly 4 billion years, are together known as the Precambrian.
Evidence for life has been found in the Archaean about 3.8 billion years ago, but life did not become abundant until the
Phanerozoic.
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The Phanerozoic is divided into three eras starting with the earliest, these are the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic.
The Paleozoic Era saw the development of many kinds of animals and plants in the seas and on land, the Mesozoic Era
was the age of dinosaurs, and the Cenozoic Era we are in currently is the age of mammals.

Most of the fossils seen in Paleozoic rocks are invertebrate animals lacking backbones, such as corals, mollusks and
trilobites. Fish are first found about 450 million years ago, while amphibians appear roughly 380 million years ago. By 300
million years ago, large forests and swamps covered the land, and the earliest fossils of reptiles appear during this period
as well.

The Mesozoic saw the ascendence of dinosaurs, although mammals also appear in the fossil record about 200 million
years ago. During this time, flowering plants became the dominant plant group and continue to be so today.

The Cenozoic began about 65 million years ago with the end of the age of dinosaurs, which many scientists think was
caused by a cosmic impact. Mammals survived to become the dominant land animals of today.

Composition & structure

Atmosphere

Earth's atmosphere is roughly 78 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen, with trace amounts of water, argon, carbon dioxide
and other gases. Nowhere else in the solar system can one find an atmosphere loaded with free oxygen, which ultimately
proved vital to one of the other unique features of Earth us.

Air surrounds Earth and becomes thinner farther from the surface. Roughly 100 miles (160 km) above Earth, the air is so
thin that satellites can zip through with little resistance. Still, traces of atmosphere can be found as high as 370 miles (600
km) above the surface.

The lowest layer of the atmosphere is known as the troposphere, which is constantly in motion, causing the weather.
Sunlight heats the planet's surface, causing warm air to rise. This air ultimately expands and cools as air pressure
decreases, and because this cool air is denser than its surroundings, it then sinks, only to get warmed by the Earth once
again.

Above the troposphere, some 30 miles (48 km) above the Earth's surface, is the stratosphere. The still air of the
stratosphere contains the ozone layer, which was created when ultraviolet light caused trios of oxygen atoms to bind
together into ozone molecules. Ozone prevents most of the sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation from reaching Earth's
surface.

Water vapor, carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere trap heat from the sun, warming Earth. Without this so-
called "greenhouse effect," Earth would probably be too cold for life to exist, although a runaway greenhouse effect led to
the hellish conditions now seen on Venus.

Earth-orbiting satellites have shown that the upper atmosphere actually expands during the day and contracts at night due
to heating and cooling.

Magnetic field

Earth's magnetic field is generated by currents flowing in Earth's outer core. The magnetic poles are always on the move,
with the magnetic North Pole recently accelerating its northward motion to 24 miles (40 km) annually, likely exiting North
America and reaching Siberia in a few decades.

Earth's magnetic field is changing in other ways, too globally, the magnetic field has weakened 10 percent since the
19th century, according to NASA. These changes are mild compared to what Earth's magnetic field has done in the past
sometimes the field completely flips, with the north and the south poles swapping places.

When charged particles from the sun get trapped in Earth's magnetic field, they smash into air molecules above the
magnetic poles, causing them to glow, a phenomenon known as the aurorae, the northern and southern lights.

Chemical composition

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Oxygen is the most abundant element in rocks in Earth's crust, composing roughly 47 percent of the weight of all rock.
The second most abundant element is silicon at 27 percent, followed by aluminum at 8 percent, iron at 5 percent, calcium
at 4 percent, and sodium, potassium, and magnesium at about 2 percent each.

Earth's core consists mostly of iron and nickel and potentially smaller amounts of lighter elements such as sulfur and
oxygen. The mantle is made of iron and magnesium-rich silicate rocks. (The combination of silicon and oxygen is known
as silica, and minerals that contain silica are known as silicate minerals.)

Internal structure

Earth's core is about 4,400 miles (7,100 km) wide, slightly larger than half the Earth's diameter and roughly the size of
Mars. The outermost 1,400 miles (2,250 km) of the core are liquid, while the inner core about four-fifths as big as
Earth's moon at some 1,600 miles (2,600 km) in diameter is solid.

Above the core is Earth's mantle, which is about 1,800 miles (2,900 km) thick. The mantle is not completely stiff, but can
flow slowly. Earth's crust floats on the mantle much as a wood floats on water, and the slow motion of rock in the mantle
shuffles continents around and causes earthquakes, volcanoes, and the formation of mountain ranges.

Above the mantle, Earth has two kinds of crust. The dry land of the continents consists mostly of granite and other light
silicate minerals, while the ocean floors are made up mostly of a dark, dense volcanic rock called basalt. Continental crust
averages some 25 miles (40 km) thick, although it can be thinner or thicker in some areas. Oceanic crust is usually only
about 5 miles (8 km) thick. Water fills in low areas of the basalt crust to form the world's oceans. Earth has more than
enough water to completely fill the ocean basins, and the rest of it spreads onto edges of the continents, areas known as
the continental shelf.

Earth gets warmer toward its core. At the bottom of the continental crust, temperatures reach about 1,800 degrees F
(1,000 degrees C), increasing about 3 degrees F per mile (1 degree C per kilometer) below the crust. Geologists think the
temperature of Earth's outer core is about 6,700 to 7,800 degrees F (3,700 to 4,300 degrees C), and the inner core may
reach 12,600 degrees F (7,000 degrees C), hotter than the surface of the sun. Only the enormous pressures found at the
super-hot inner core keep it solid.

Recent exoplanet surveys such as NASAs Kepler mission suggest that Earth-size planets are common throughout the
Milky Way galaxy. Nearly a fourth of sun-like stars observed by Kepler have potentially habitable Earth-size planets.

Earth's moon

Earth's moon is 2,159 miles (3,474 km) wide, about one-fourth of Earth's diameter. Earth has one moon, while Mercury
and Venus have none and all the other planets in our solar system have two or more.

The leading explanation for how the moon formed was that a giant impact knocked off the raw ingredients for the moon off
the primitive molten Earth and into orbit. Scientists have suggested the impactor was roughly 10 percent the mass of
Earth, about the size of Mars.

Species overview

Earth is the only planet in the universe known to possess life. There are several million known species of life, ranging from
the bottom of the deepest ocean to a few miles into the atmosphere, and scientists think far more remain to be
discovered. Scientists figure there are between 5 million and 100 million species on Earth, but science has only identified
about 2 million of them.

Earth is the only body in the solar system known to host life, although scientists suspect that other candidates such as
Saturns moon Titan or Jupiters moon Europa have the potential to house primitive living creatures. Scientists have yet
to precisely nail down exactly how complex life rapidly evolved on Earth from more primitive ancestors. One solution
suggests that life first evolved on the nearby planet Mars, once a habitable planet, then traveled to Earth on meteorites
hurled from the Red Planet.

How Big is Earth?

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Earth, the third planet from the sun, is the fifth largest planet in the solar system; only the gas giants Jupiter, Saturn,
Uranus and Neptune are bigger. Earth is the largest of the terrestrial planets of the inner solar system, bigger than
Mercury, Venus and Mars.

Radius, diameter and circumference

The mean radius of Earth is 3,959 miles (6,371 kilometers). However, Earth is not quite a sphere. The planet's rotation
causes it to bulge at the equator. Earth's equatorial diameter is 7,926 miles (12,756 km), but from pole to pole, the
diameter is 7,898 miles (12,714 km) a difference of only 28 miles (42 km).

The circumference of Earth at the equator is about 24,874 miles (40,030 km), but from pole-to-pole the meridional
circumference Earth is only 24,860 miles (40,008 km) around. This shape, caused by the flattening at the poles, is
called an oblate spheroid.

Density, mass and volume

Earth's density is 5.513 grams per cubic centimeter. Earth is the densest planet in the solar system because of its metallic
core and rocky mantle. Jupiter, which is 318 more massive than Earth, is less dense because it is made of gases, such as
hydrogen.

Earth's mass is 6.6 sextillion tons (5.9722 x 1024 kilograms). It volume is about 260 billion cubic miles (1 trillion cubic
kilometers).

The total surface area of Earth is about 197 million square miles (510 million square km). About 71 percent is covered by
water and 29 percent by land.

Highest and lowest points

Mount Everest is the highest place on Earth above sea level, at 29,028 feet (8,848 meters), but it is not the highest point
on Earth that is, the place most distant from the center of the Earth. That distinction belongs to Mount Chimaborazo in
the Andes Mountains in Ecuador. Although Chimaborazo is about 10,000 feet shorter (relative to sea level) than Everest,
this mountain is about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) farther into space because of the equatorial bulge.

The lowest point on Earth is the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean. It reaches down about 36,200 feet (11,034
meters) below sea level.

Earth's Atmosphere: Composition, Climate & Weather

Earth is the only planet in the solar system with an atmosphere that can sustain life. The blanket of gases not only
contains the air that we breathe but also protects us from the blasts of heat and radiation emanating from the sun. It
warms the planet by day and cools it at night.

Earth's atmosphere is about 300 miles (480 kilometers) thick, but most of it is within 10 miles (16 km) the surface. Air
pressure decreases with altitude. At sea level, air pressure is about 14.7 pounds per square inch (1 kilogram per square
centimeter). At 10,000 feet (3 km), the air pressure is 10 pounds per square inch (0.7 kg per square cm). There is also
less oxygen to breathe.

Composition of air
The gases in Earth's atmosphere include:

Nitrogen 78 percent
Oxygen 21 percent
Argon 0.93 percent
Carbon dioxide 0.038 percent
Water vapor and other gases exist in small amounts as well.

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Atmosphere layers
Earth's atmosphere is divided into five main layers, the exosphere, the thermosphere, the mesosphere, the stratosphere
and the troposphere. The atmosphere thins out in each higher layer until the gases dissipate in space. There is no distinct
boundary between the atmosphere and space, but an imaginary line about 68 miles (110 kilometers) from the surface,
called the Karman line, is usually where scientists say atmosphere meets outer space.

The troposphere is the layer closest to Earth's surface. It is 4 to 12 miles (7 to 20 km) thick and contains half of Earth's
atmosphere. Air is warmer near the ground and gets colder higher up. Nearly all of the water vapor and dust in the
atmosphere are in this layer and that is why clouds are found here.

The stratosphere is the second layer. It starts above the troposphere and ends about 31 miles (50 km) above ground.
Ozone is abundant here and it heats the atmosphere while also absorbing harmful radiation from the sun. The air here is
very dry, and it is about a thousand times thinner here than it is at sea level. Because of that, this is where jet aircraft and
weather balloons fly.

The mesosphere starts at 31 miles (50 km) and extends to 53 miles (85 km) high. The top of the mesosphere, called the
mesopause, is the coldest part of Earth's atmosphere with temperatures averaging about minus 130 degrees F (minus 90
C). This layer is hard to study. Jets and balloons don't go high enough, and satellites and space shuttles orbit too high.
Scientists do know that meteors burn up in this layer.

The thermosphere extends from about 56 miles (90 km) to between 310 and 620 miles (500 and 1,000 km).
Temperatures can get up to 2,700 degrees F (1,500 C) at this altitude. The thermosphere is considered part of Earth's
atmosphere, but air density is so low that most of this layer is what is normally thought of as outer space. In fact, this is
where the space shuttles flew and where the International Space Station orbits Earth. This is also the layer where the
auroras occur. Charged particles from space collide with atoms and molecules in the thermosphere, exciting them into
higher states of energy. The atoms shed this excess energy by emitting photons of light, which we see as the colorful
Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis.

The exosphere, the highest layer, is extremely thin and is where the atmosphere merges into outer space. It is composed
of very widely dispersed particles of hydrogen and helium.

Climate and weather

Earth is able to support a wide variety of living beings because of its diverse regional climates, which range from extreme
cold at the poles to tropical heat at the Equator. Regional climate is often described as the average weather in a place
over more than 30 years. A region's climate is often described, for example, as sunny, windy, dry, or humid. These can
also describe the weather in a certain place, but while the weather can change in just a few hours, climate changes over a
longer span of time.

Earth's global climate is an average of regional climates. The global climate has cooled and warmed throughout history.
Today, we are seeing unusually rapid warming. The scientific consensus is that greenhouse gases, which are increasing
because of human activities, are trapping heat in the atmosphere.

What is the Temperature on Earth?

Earth is the only planet we know of that can support life. The planet is not too close or too far away from the sun. It lies in
a "Goldilocks zone" that is just right not too hot, not too cold.

The distance from Earth to the sun is one of the most important factors in making Earth habitable. The next closest planet
to the sun, Venus, for example, is the hottest planet in the solar system. Temperatures there reach more than 750 F (400
C), while the average temperature on Mars is minus 80 F (minus 60 C).

Earth's atmosphere also play a vital role in regulating the temperature by providing a blanket of gases that not only
protects us from excessive heat and harmful radiation from the sun, but also traps heat rising from the Earth's interior,
keeping us warm.

The average temperature on Earth is about 61 degrees F (16 C). But temperatures vary greatly around the world
depending on the time of year, ocean and wind currents and weather conditions. Summers tend to be warmer and winters
colder. Also, temperatures tend to be higher near the equator and lower near the poles.
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Temperature extremes
According to the World Meteorological Organization, the coldest place on Earth is Vostok Station in Antarctica, where it
reached minus 128.6 F (minus 89.2 C) on July 21, 1983. The coldest inhabited place is Oymyakon, Russia, a small village
in Siberia, where it dips down to an average of minus 49 F (minus 45 C) and once hit a low of minus 96.16 F (minus 71
C).

Which location holds the record as the hottest place on Earth is a matter of some contention. El Azizia, Libya, held the top
hot spot for 90 years. Temperatures allegedly climbed to 136.4 F (58 C) on Sept. 13, 1922. But the World Meteorological
Organization stripped the town southwest of Tripoli of that distinction in 2012. A committee of climate experts from nine
countries concluded that the temperature had been documented in error by an inexperienced observer.

So the "new" hottest place on Earth is Greenland Ranch (Furnace Creek) in Death Valley, Calif., where it reached 134 F
(56.7 C) on July 10, 1913. But even that distinction depends on what is being measured. Death Valley's record is for the
highest air temperature. A higher surface temperature of 159.3 F (70.7 C) was recorded by a Landsat satellite in 2004 and
2005 in the Lut Desert in Iran.

Highest and lowest temperatures by continent

Continent Temperature Date Location
North America High: 134 F (56.7 C) July 10, 1913 Furnace Creek Ranch, Death Valley, Calif.
Low: -81.4 F (-63 C) Feb. 3, 1947 Snag, Yukon Territory, Canada
South America High: 120 F (48.9 C) Dec. 11, 1905 Rivadavia, Argentina
Low: -27 F (-32.8 C) June 1, 1907 Sarmiento, Argentina
Europe High: 118.4 F (48 C) July 10, 1977 Athens and Elefsina, Greece
Low: -72.6 F (-58.1 C) Dec. 31, 1978 Ust 'Schugor, Russia
Asia High: 129.2 F (54 C) June 21, 1942 Tirat Zevi, Israel
Low: -90 F (-67.8 C) 1) Feb. 5, 1892 1) Verkhoyansk, Russia
2) Feb. 6, 1933 2) Oymyakon, Russia
Africa High: 131 F (55 C) July 7, 1931 Kebili, Tunisia
Low: -11 F (-23.9 C) Feb. 11, 1935 Ifrane, Morocco
Australia High: 123 F (50.7 C) Jan. 2, 1960 Oodnadatta, South Australia
Low: -9.4 F (-23 C) July 21, 1983 Charlotte Pass, New South Wales
Antarctica High: 59 F (15 C) May 1, 1974 Vanda Station, Antarctica
Low: -129 F (-89.2 C) July 21, 1983 Vostok Station, Antarctica
Source: World Meteorological Organization

Rising temps, rising seas

The average surface temperature has risen by 33.4 degrees F (0.8 C) since the 1880s. The highest increases have
occurred in just the past few decades. This gradual increase in the average temperature is called global warming. There is
great debate about whether global warming is real, but climate scientists looking at the data agree that the planet is
getting warmer. The biggest concern about global warming is that the polar ice will melt and sea levels will rise. Scientists
predict that the Arctic may be ice-free by 2040. [10 Climate Change Myths Busted]

What is Earth Made Of?

Earth is unique among the known planets: it has an abundance of water. Other worlds including a few moons have
atmospheres, ice, and even oceans, but only Earth has the right combination to sustain life.

Earth's oceans cover about 70 percent of the planet's surface with an average depth of 2.5 miles (4 kilometers). Fresh
water exists in liquid form in lakes and rivers and as water vapor in the atmosphere, which causes much of Earth's
weather.

Earth has multiple layers. The ocean basins and the continents compose the crust, the outermost layer. Earth's crust is
between three and 46 miles (five and 75 km) deep. The thickest parts are under the continents and the thinnest parts are
under the oceans.

Crust

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Earth's crust is made up of several elements: oxygen, 47 percent; silicon, 27 percent; aluminum, 8 percent; iron, 5
percent; calcium, 4 percent; magnesium, potassium and sodium, 2 percent.

The crust is divided into huge plates that float on the mantle, the next layer. The plates are constantly in motion; they
move at about the same rate as fingernails grow. Earthquakes occur when these plates grind against each other.
Mountains form when the plates collide and deep trenches form when one plate slides under another plate. Plate
tectonics is the theory explaining the motion of these plates.

Mantle
The mantle under the crust is about 1,800 miles deep (2,890 km). It is composed mostly of silicate rocks rich in
magnesium and iron. Intense heat causes the rocks to rise. They then cool and sink back down to the core. This
convection like a lava lamp is believed to be what causes the tectonic plates to move. When the mantle pushes
through the crust, volcanoes erupt.

Core
At the center of the Earth is the core, which has two parts. The solid, inner core of iron has a radius of about 760 miles
(about 1,220 km). It is surrounded by a liquid, outer core composed of a nickel-iron alloy. It is about 1,355 miles (2,180
km) thick. The inner core spins at a different speed than the rest of the planet. This is thought to cause Earth's magnetic
field. When charged particles from the solar wind collide with air molecules above Earth's magnetic poles, it causes the air
molecules to glow, causing the auroras the northern and southern lights.

How Was Earth Formed?

There are two theories as to how planets in the solar system were created. he first and most widely accepted theory, core
accretion, works well with the formation of the terrestrial planets like Earth but has problems with giant planets. The
second, the disk instability method, may account for the creation of these giant planets.

Scientists are continuing to study planets in and out of the solar system in an effort to better understand which of these
methods is most accurate.

The core accretion model

Approximately 4.6 billion years ago, the solar system was a cloud of dust and gas known as a solar nebula. Gravity
collapsed the material in on itself as it began to spin, forming the sun in the center of the nebula.

With the rise of the sun, the remaining material began to clump up. Small particles drew together, bound by the force of
gravity, into larger particles. The solar wind swept away lighter elements, such as hydrogen and helium, from the closer
regions, leaving only heavy, rocky materials to create smaller terrestrial worlds like Earth. But farther away, the solar
winds had less impact on lighter elements, allowing them to coalesce into gas giants. In this way, asteroids, comets,
planets, and moons were created.

Earth's rocky core formed first, with heavy elements colliding and binding together. Dense material sank to the center,
while the lighter material created the crust. The planet's magnetic field probably formed around this time. Gravity captured
some of the gases that made up the planet's early atmosphere.

Early in its evolution, Earth suffered an impact by a large body that catapulted pieces of the young planet's mantle into
space. Gravity caused many of these pieces to draw together and form the moon, which took up orbit around its creator.

The flow of the mantle beneath the crust causes plate tectonics, the movement of the large plates of rock on the surface
of the Earth. Collisions and friction gave rise to mountains and volcanoes, which began to spew gases into the
atmosphere.

Although the population of comets and asteroids passing through the inner solar system is sparse today, they were more
abundant when the planets and sun were young. Collisions from these icy bodies likely deposited much of the Earth's
water on its surface. Because the planet is in the Goldilocks zone, the region where liquid water neither freezes nor
evaporates but can remain as a liquid, the water remained at the surface, which many scientists think plays a key role in
the development of life.
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Exoplanet observations seem to confirm core accretion as the dominant formation process. Stars with more "metals" a
term astronomers use for elements other than hydrogen and helium in their cores have more giant planets than their
metal-poor cousins. According to NASA, core accretion suggests that small, rocky worlds should be more common than
the more massive gas giants.

The 2005 discovery of a giant planet with a massive core orbiting the sun-like star HD 149026 is an example of an
exoplanet that helped strengthen the case for core accretion.

"This is a confirmation of the core accretion theory for planet formation and evidence that planets of this kind should exist
in abundance," said Greg Henry in a press release. Henry, an astronomer at Tennessee State University, Nashville,
detected the dimming of the star.

In 2017, the European Space Agency plans to launch the CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite (CHEOPS), which will study
exoplanets ranging in sizes from super-Earths to Neptune. Studying these distant worlds may help determine how planets
in the solar system formed.

"In the core accretion scenario, the core of a planet must reach a critical mass before it is able to accrete gas in a runaway
fashion," said the CHEOPS team.

"This critical mass depends upon many physical variables, among the most important of which is the rate of planetesimals
accretion."

By studying how growing planets accrete material, CHEOPS will provide insight into how worlds grow.

The disk instability model

Although the core accretion model works fine for terrestrial planets, gas giants would have needed to evolve rapidly to
grab hold of the significant mass of lighter gases they contain. But simulations have not been able to account for this rapid
formation. According to models, the process takes several million years, longer than the light gases were available in the
early solar system. At the same time, the core accretion model faces a migration issue, as the baby planets are likely to
spiral into the sun in a short amount of time.

According to a relatively new theory, disk instability, clumps of dust and gas are bound together early in the life of the
solar system. Over time, these clumps slowly compact into a giant planet. These planets can form faster than their core
accretion rivals, sometimes in as little as a thousand years, allowing them to trap the rapidly-vanishing lighter gases. They
also quickly reach an orbit-stabilizing mass that keeps them from death-marching into the sun.

According to exoplanetary astronomer Paul Wilson, if disk instability dominates the formation of planets, it should produce
a wide number of worlds at large orders. The four giant planets orbiting at significant distances around the star HD 9799
provides observational evidence for disk instability. Fomalhaut b, an exoplanet with a 2,000-year orbit around its star,
could also be an example of a world formed through disk instability, though the planet could also have been ejected due
to interactions with its neighbors.

Pebble accretion

The biggest challenge to core accretion is time building massive gas giants fast enough to grab the lighter components
of their atmosphere. Recent research on how smaller, pebble-sized objects fused together to build giant planets up to
1000 times faster than earlier studies.

"This is the first model that we know about that you start out with a pretty simple structure for the solar nebula from which
planets form, and end up with the giant-planet system that we see," study lead author Harold Levison, an astronomer at
the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Colorado, told Space.com in 2015.

In 2012, researchers Michiel Lambrechts and Anders Johansen from Lund University in Sweden proposed that tiny
pebbles, once written off, held the key to rapidly building giant planets.

"They showed that the leftover pebbles from this formation process, which previously were thought to be unimportant,
could actually be a huge solution to the planet-forming problem," Levison said.

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Levison and his team built on that research to model more precisely how the tiny pebbles could form planets seen in the
galaxy today. While previous simulations, both large and medium-sized objects consumed their pebble-sized cousins at a
relatively constant rate, Levison's simulations suggest that the larger objects acted more like bullies, snatching away
pebbles from the mid-sized masses to grow at a far faster rate.

"The larger objects now tend to scatter the smaller ones more than the smaller ones scatter them back, so the smaller
ones end up getting scattered out of the pebble disk," study co-author Katherine Kretke, also from SwRI, told Space.com.
"The bigger guy basically bullies the smaller one so they can eat all the pebbles themselves, and they can continue to
grow up to form the cores of the giant planets."

As scientists continue to study planets inside of the solar system, as well as around other stars, they will better
understand how Earth and its siblings formed.