f1e586ae-d245-4c8b-8bbf-322108845829.jfif

## Theories on the origin of the Solar System ### Theory of Vortices * Rene Descartes, in the mid 1600 * Postulated that space was entirely filled with matter in various states, whirling around the Sun like a vortex. * The universe started from chaos, following his basic law of motion, coul...

## Theories on the origin of the Solar System ### Theory of Vortices * Rene Descartes, in the mid 1600 * Postulated that space was entirely filled with matter in various states, whirling around the Sun like a vortex. * The universe started from chaos, following his basic law of motion, could have had its particles arranged so as to resemble what is today. * Whenever a singular particle moves, another particle also moves to occupy space where the previous particle was. * Type of circular motion, or vortex, would have created to be the orbits of the planets about the Sun with the heavier objects spinning out towards the outside of the vortex and the lighter objects remaining closer to the center. ### Nebular Hypothesis * Immanuel Kant (hundred years after Rene Descartes) * Suggested that contraction in the middle of the rotating cloud appeared and the rest flattened out like a disk, using Newton's idea of gravity. * The formation, the rotation of Earth and the other planes would be explained. ### Laplace's Nebular Theory * Pierre Simon Laplace, a French mathematician in a year 1700's, proposed a similar model of a solar system. * A slowly rotating nebula (a cloud of vast gas and dusts) collapsed under gravity forming an oblate spheroid due to the increase in its spin rate. * Contraction and cooling occurred and formed a lens-like structure leaving detached rings behind, which in the later process collapsed to form planets condensing in each ring. ### Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon * Conceived the idea that a comet collided with the Sun sending matter off to form the planets. * Theories citing cosmic catastrophe continued for several hundreds of years. ### Harold Urey * Middle part of the 20th century, scientists were able to find a new source of data: the chemical composition of space objects. He initially studied the meteorites and their chemical analysis and concluded that meteorites contain matter. ### Solar Nebular Disk Model (SNDM) * Victor Safronov (1970's) * Solar system was formed 4.568 billion years ago when a smaller part of a giant molecular cloud experienced a gravitational collapse. * Forming the Sun flattening into a protoplanetary disk forming the planets, moon, asteroids, and the other small solar system bodies.