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    Origin of The Solar System

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    Coleen Jhoy Siete
    The document discusses early scientific theories of the origin of the solar system. It explains that in ancient times, theories were not constrained by evidence like modern theories. The first scientific theory was proposed by Emanuel Swedenborg in 1734, which suggested the solar system formed from a shell of material around the Sun breaking into pieces. This idea of the solar system forming from an original nebula was expanded on by Immanuel Kant in 1755. Pierre-Simon Laplace later improved on this nebular hypothesis in the late 1700s by proposing that as the Sun contracted and its rotational velocity increased, centrifugal force pushed material into rings in its equatorial plane that condensed to form planets and their moons.

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    Origin of The Solar System

    Uploaded by

    Coleen Jhoy Siete
    21 views3 pages
    The document discusses early scientific theories of the origin of the solar system. It explains that in ancient times, theories were not constrained by evidence like modern theories. The first scientific theory was proposed by Emanuel Swedenborg in 1734, which suggested the solar system formed from a shell of material around the Sun breaking into pieces. This idea of the solar system forming from an original nebula was expanded on by Immanuel Kant in 1755. Pierre-Simon Laplace later improved on this nebular hypothesis in the late 1700s by proposing that as the Sun contracted and its rotational velocity increased, centrifugal force pushed material into rings in its equatorial plane that condensed to form planets and their moons.

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    Origin of the solar system

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    The document discusses early scientific theories of the origin of the solar system. It explains that in ancient times, theories were not constrained by evidence like modern theories. The first scientific theory was proposed by Emanuel Swedenborg in 1734, which suggested the solar system formed from a shell of material around the Sun breaking into pieces. This idea of the solar system forming from an original nebula was expanded on by Immanuel Kant in 1755. Pierre-Simon Laplace later improved on this nebular hypothesis in the late 1700s by proposing that as the Sun contracted and its rotational velocity increased, centrifugal force pushed material into rings in its equatorial plane that condensed to form planets and their moons.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    21 views3 pages

    Origin of The Solar System

    Uploaded by

    Coleen Jhoy Siete
    The document discusses early scientific theories of the origin of the solar system. It explains that in ancient times, theories were not constrained by evidence like modern theories. The first scientific theory was proposed by Emanuel Swedenborg in 1734, which suggested the solar system formed from a shell of material around the Sun breaking into pieces. This idea of the solar system forming from an original nebula was expanded on by Immanuel Kant in 1755. Pierre-Simon Laplace later improved on this nebular hypothesis in the late 1700s by proposing that as the Sun contracted and its rotational velocity increased, centrifugal force pushed material into rings in its equatorial plane that condensed to form planets and their moons.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
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    Origin of the solar system

    As the amount of data on the planets, moons,


    comets, and asteroids has grown, so too have the
    problems faced by astronomers in forming theories
    of the origin of the solar system. In the ancient
    world, theories of the origin of Earth and the objects
    seen in the sky were certainly much less constrained
    by fact. Indeed, a scientific approach to the origin of
    the solar system became possible only after the
    publication of Isaac Newton’s laws of
    motion and gravitation in 1687. Even after this
    breakthrough, many years elapsed while scientists
    struggled with applications of Newton’s laws to
    explain the apparent motions of planets, moons,
    comets, and asteroids. In 1734 Swedish
    philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg proposed a model
    for the solar system’s origin in which a shell of
    material around the Sun broke into small pieces that
    formed the planets. This idea of the solar system
    forming out of an original nebula was extended by
    the German philosopher Immanuel Kant in 1755.

    Early scientific theories

    The Kant-Laplace nebular hypothesis


    Kant’s central idea was that the solar system began as a
    cloud of dispersed particles. He assumed that the mutual
    gravitational attractions of the particles caused them to
    start moving and colliding, at which point chemical
    forces kept them bonded together. As some of
    these aggregates became larger than others, they
    grew still more rapidly, ultimately forming the
    planets. Because Kant was highly versed in
    neither physics nor mathematics, he did not
    recognize the intrinsic limitations of his approach.
    His model does not account for planets moving
    around the Sun in the same direction and in the
    same plane, as they are observed to do, nor does it
    explain the revolution of planetary satellites.
    A significant step forward was made by Pierre-
    Simon Laplace of France some 40 years later. A
    brilliant mathematician, Laplace was particularly
    successful in the field of celestial mechanics. Besides
    publishing a monumental treatise on the subject,
    Laplace wrote a popular book on astronomy, with an
    appendix in which he made some suggestions about
    the origin of the solar system.
    Laplace’s model begins with the Sun already formed
    and rotating and its atmosphere extending beyond the
    distance at which the farthest planet would be created.
    Knowing nothing about the source of energy in stars,
    Laplace assumed that the Sun would start to cool as it
    radiated away its heat. In response to this cooling, as the
    pressure exerted by its gases declined, the Sun would
    contract. According to the law of conservation of angular
    momentum, the decrease in size would be accompanied by
    an increase in the Sun’s rotational velocity. Centrifugal
    acceleration would push the material in the atmosphere
    outward, while gravitational attraction would pull it
    toward the central mass; when these forces just balanced,
    a ring of material would be left behind in the plane of the
    Sun’s equator. This process would have continued through
    the formation of several concentric rings, each of which
    then would have coalesced to form a planet. Similarly, a
    planet’s moons would have originated from rings produced
    by the forming planets.

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