1 day ago · The solar system is a pretty busy place. There are eight planets, hundreds of moons, and many thousands of asteroids and comets zipping around our Sun. But how did this busy stellar …

Most of the collapsing mass collected in the center, forming the Sun, while the rest flattened into a protoplanetary disk out of which the planets, moons, asteroids, and other small Solar System bodies …

4 days ago · The current approach to the origin of the solar system treats it as part of the general process of star formation. As observational information has steadily increased, the field of plausible …

The solar system as we know it began life as a vast, swirling cloud of gas and dust, twisting through the universe without direction or form. About 4.6 billion years ago, this gigantic cloud was transformed …

Dec 8, 2025 · The formation of the Solar System is believed to have begun about 4.6 billion years ago from a giant cloud of gas and dust known as the solar nebula. This cloud collapsed under its own …

This illustration shows the steps in the formation of the solar system from the solar nebula. As the nebula shrinks, its rotation causes it to flatten into a disk.

All of the main building blocks for life -- carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen (CHONs) -- were present in the cloud that collapsed to form our solar system. Ultimately, this concentration of gas and dust …

How Was Our Solar System Formed? The Sun and the planets formed together, 4.6 billion years ago, from a cloud of gas and dust called the solar nebula. A shock wave from a nearby supernova …

Mar 22, 2025 · The formation of the solar system occurred approximately 4.6 billion years ago, evidenced by radiometric dating of meteorites. The pre-solar nebula, a cloud of gas and dust, existed …

Click the image on the left for a video of a simulated formation of a system of planets. This particular simulation demonstrates the Solar Nebula Hypothesis - the formation of our Solar System (video …