THEORIES OF SOLAR SYSTEM

NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS
• States that hydrogen and other gases swirled around and condensed into our sun and its planets.

• Nebular Hypothesis, an explanation of how the solar system was formed, proposed by Pierre
Simon de Laplace in 1796. Laplace said that the material from which the solar system was formed
was once a slowly rotating cloud, or nebula, of extremely hot gas. The gas cooled and the nebula
began to shrink. As the nebula became smaller, it rotated more rapidly, becoming somewhat
flattened at the poles.

• A combination of centrifugal force, produced by the nebula's rotation, and gravitational force, from
the mass of the nebula, caused rings of gas to be left behind as the nebula shrank. These rings
condensed into planets and their satellites, while the remaining part of the nebula formed the sun.

NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS—For many years the nebular hypothesis was a leading theory.
According to it, the sun and its planets supposedly condensed out of swirling eddies of cold, dark,
interstellar clouds of gas and dust.
FISSION THEORY
• according to George Darwin, he stated that the sun burst open and planets and moons shot out a
high speeds and went to their respective places, then stopped, and started orbiting the sun as the
moon began orbiting the planets. The moon lifted out from the Pacific Ocean on a high tide and
began orbiting the Earth.

• The "fission theory" says that our sun burst one day, and all our planets came from it. Then the
moons shot out from each planet, stopped, turned sideways and began circling the planets they
came out of. Our moon is said to have emerged from an explosion in the Pacific Ocean.
CAPTURE THEORY
• planets and moons were flying around, and some were captured by our sun and began circling.

• The "capture theory" says that our planets and moons were wandering around in space and the
planets were captured by the gravity of our sun, and the moons were captured by the planets.
ACCRETION THEORY
• a pile of space dust and rock chunks pushed together into our planet, and another pile pushed
itself into our moon. Then the moon got close enough and began encircling the Earth.

The "accretion, condensation, nebular contraction," or "dust cloud" theory says that small chunks
of material separately formed themselves into our earth and the moon.

"According to this idea, a dust cloud began to rotate. . When the mass had swept up most of the
material in an eddy, a planet was formed."—*M. Bishop, *B. Sutherland, and *P. Lewis, Focus on
Earth Science (1981), p. 470.

It is said that the moon is just a pile of dust, and "just happened" to wander near and begin circling
our world, another "pile of dust." But two huge spheres—earth and moon—so close to each other,
would fly apart or, being so close to each other, would soon crash. They would not endlessly circle
one another, neither colliding nor separating.
PLANETARY COLLISION THEORY
• our world collided with small planet, and the explosion threw off rocks which became the moon,
and then it began orbiting us.

• The "collision theory" of the origin our moon theorizes that our world is said to have collided with
a small planet. The resulting explosion threw off rocks which formed our orbiting moon.
STELLAR COLLISION THEORY
• our planets, moons, and suns spins off from the collision between stars.
GAS CLOUD THEORY
• gas clouds were captured by our sun but instead of being drawn into it, they began whirling and
pushing themselves into planets and moons.

• The "gas cloud theory" of our planets and moons teaches that gas clouds were captured by our
sun, which then mysteriously formed themselves at a distance into planets and moons.