PLANETISIMAL THEORY

Encounter or collision theories, in which a star passes close by or actually collides with the
sun, try to explain the distribution of angular momentum. According to the planetesimal
theory developed by T. C. Chamberlin and F. R. Moulton in the early part of the 20th cent., a
star passed close to the sun. Huge tides were raised on the surface; some of this erupted
matter was torn free and, by a cross-pull from the star, was thrust into elliptical orbits
around the sun. The smaller masses quickly cooled to become solid bodies, called
planetesimals. As their orbits crossed, the larger bodies grew by absorbing the
planetesimals, thus becoming planet.

NEBULAR THEORY

Theory of the origin of the solar system according to which a rotating nebula cooled and
contracted, throwing off rings of matter that contracted into the planets and their moons,
while the great mass of the condensing nebula became the sun...s.

DUST CLOUD THEORY

Dust-Cloud Theory. Between 1940 and 1955 the German astronomer Carl f. von
Weizsaccker, the Dutch-American astronomer Gerald P. Kuiper and the U. S. chemist Harold
C. Urey worked out a theory that attempted to account for all the characteristics of the solar
system that need to be explained. According to their dust-cloud theory, the solar system
was formed from a slowly rotating cloud of dust and gas that contracted and started to
rotate faster in its outer parts, where eddies formed. These eddies were small near the
center of the cloud and larger at greater distances from the center. The distances
corresponded more or less to the Titius-Bode relation.
As the clouds cooled, materials coagulated near the edges of the eddies and eventually
formed planets and asteroids, all moving in the same direction. The slowly rotating central
part of the cloud condensed and formed the sun, and the sun's central temperature rose as
gravity further compressed the material. When nuclear reactions eventually began in the
suns interior, about 5 billion years ago, much of the nearby gas was blown away by the
pressure of the sun's emitted light. Nevertheless the earthy retained an atmosphere
consisting of methane, ammonia, carbon monoxide, water vapor, and nitrogen, with
perhaps some hydrogen. In this primitive atmosphere and in the seas below it, organic
compounds were formed that eventually resulted in living organisms. The organisms
evolved in the next 2 billion years into higher plants and animals, and photosynthesis by
plants and the weathering of rock produced the oxygen in the earth's atmosphere.
Although free gases near the sun were blown outward 4 to 5 billion years ago, according to
the dust-cloud theory, the giant planets were too distant to be much affected. They are
large, therefore, and contain a great amount of hydrogen. The comets, in turn, are thought
to be the outer part of the primordial nebula, left behind as the inner part condensed to
form the sun and the planets. The Dutch astronomer J. H. Oort speculated that this material
condensed into chunks that continue to move along with the sun through space. Now and
then a chunk is perturbed and falls slowly toward the sun. As it is heated by sunlight, it
grows a coma and tail.
The dust-cloud theory thus explains the solar system characteristics listed above. It is most
weak in detailing the process whereby the planets and asteroids formed from solids that
made up only a small percent of the primordial nebula. However, this is essentially a
chemical problem, strongly dependent on the sequence or timing of events such as eddy
formation, temperature changes, and the start of solar luminosity."

EXPANDING STAR THEORY

Expansion of the universe. One of the reasons the universe is believed to be expanding is

because of the phenomenon known as 'red shift'. Light, or other electromagnetic radiation
from an astronomical object may be stretched, (due to a number of reasons) making its
wavelength longer. Because red light has a longer wavelength than blue light, the effect of
this stretching on features in the optical spectrum is to move them towards the red end of
the spectrum. If then the optical spectrum of a distant galaxy shows features that are
shifted towards the red end of the spectrum (red shifted), it can be due to one or more of
the following three reasons:

1) Motion. The galaxy is moving away from us, this is known as the Doppler effect. The
same effect can be detected in sound. When a police car is speeding towards us the sound
waves made by its siren are 'squashed' and the pitch sounds higher. As it passes us and
starts to move away the sound waves are 'stretched' and the pitch sounds lower. In the
1920's Edwin Hubble observed that all galaxies (apart from a few local ones attracted
towards our own and showing blueshift) show red shift. This indicates that the galaxies are
all flying away from us, as in a Big Bang explosion.

2) Expansion of the universe. Einstein's famous equations show that the universe should be
expanding, not because the galaxies were moving through space, but because the 'empty'
space between them (spacetime) is expanding. This cosmological redshift results because
the light from the distant galaxies is stretched by the amount that space expands while the
light is en route to us. This also reveals that the Earth is not at the centre of the universe
with all the galaxies moving away from us, but that due to the expansion of the universe, all
the galaxies are moving away from each other, like painted dots on a balloon moving apart
as it is inflated.

3) Gravity. This is also explained by Einstein's general theory. Light moving outwards from
a star is moving 'uphill' in the star's gravitational field, and loses energy as a result. Because
light cannot slow down - it always travels at the same speed - when it loses energy its
wavelength increases, in other words, it is redshifted. It does however, require a very
powerful gravitational field for this effect to be measurable, such as created by a white
dwarf star.
All three kinds of redshift can be at work at the same time. If we had telescopes sensitive
enough to see light from a white dwarf star in a distant galaxy, the overall redshift in that
light would be due to a combination of Doppler, cosmological and gravitational redshifts.

The fact that we can measure redshift in the light from distant galaxies tells us that the
galaxies are receding from us, and from each other. It only takes a little logical deduction to
conclude that as they are now all receding from one another, then at some finite point in
the past (believed to be around 13 billion years or so) they must have all been at the same
point.

, but the expansion rate would slow to zero after an infinite amount of time. If the universe
were closed, it would eventually stop expanding a on itself, possibly leading to another big
bang. In all three cases, the expansion slows, and the force that causes the slowing is
gravity.