Jack Oughton

Analyze the main theory/ theories of the formation

and evolution of the solar system.

Ancient Theories
For as long as humans have looked at the sky we have
tried to explain it, from the planets as Gods playing out
perpetual scenes from ancient mythologies in Ancient
Greece to Mongols believing the sky to be a manifestation
of a great and terrible God, Tengri, early man tried to
ascribe meaning to this mysterious celestial display.

Explanations are not theories, though theories can

be explanations.Exaaaaa

The Arrival Of ScienceThe ARr

With the development of the scientific disciplines, came a
relatively accelerated development of cosmological
theories. A prominent American astronomical historian,
Stephen Brush, concludes, perhaps cynically, that every
individual’s list of facts to be explained consists of just
that set of features that his or her theory can explain.
The Greeks
The Greeks were some of the first people to develop
rational inquiry into a prototype of the scientific method
we use today.

Artistarchus Of Samos

Aristarchus was one of the early pioneers. He used

trigonometry; proposing that the earth was larger than the
moon, and the sun was larger than the earth. He was the
first to speculate that the earth orbited the sun. His ideas
were not taken seriously for 1800 years.

Kant LaPlace Nebular Hypothesis

Laplace
Laplace first presented his idea in 1796 in a book
Exposition du syst`eme du monde. He developed this
theory, which was first proposed in 1734 by Emanuel
Swedenborg in his work Opera Philosophica et Mineralia.
Laplace hypothesized that as the solar system was formed
out of a hot disk of spinning gas. As it cooled it collapsed,
and as it collapsed it span faster. Essentially this is the
same idea modern accretion theories propose.
He built upon Kant’s idea [although apparently unaware of
it] that observed ‘spiral nebulae’ were regions of star and
planet formation. Laplace elaborated on this by arguing
that these nebulae collapsed into a star, and, as it did so,
the remaining material gradually spun outward into a flat
disc, which then formed the planets.

It overturned a number of earlier theories such as

Georges-Louis Leclerc who in 1778 speculated that the
planets had been created by a comet's collision with the
sun in his In "Les époques de la nature". Laplace
disproved this mathematically by showing that planets
formed in such a way would eventually collide with the
sun.

Problem: Angular Momentum

Though a mathematically strong theory, miscalculations
by Laplace caused problems with his hypothesis.
If the theory were correct, the Sun must retain most of the
Solar System's angular momentum. This is because the
Sun's angular momentum would increase as it contracted,
much like a spinning ice skater who spins faster as he
brings his arms closer to his body.
Another problem with the nebular hypothesis was that if
rings of matter were split off, as Laplace stated, they
wouldn't be pulled together to form planets but would
disperse into space.

The problem of angular momentum lead to a string of

theories which challenged Laplace. These included Jeans’
1917 tidal model, Otto Schmidt’s 1944 accretion model
William McCrea’s protoplanet theory of 1970.

Chamberlin-Moulton planetesimal hypothesis

Chamberlin

This theory was proposed by Chamberlin and Moulton in

1905. The hypothesis was that gravitational reaction with
other stars from our galaxy caused material to be ripped
off into the surrounding area, and to coalesce into planets.
It supplanted Laplace’s nebular hypothesis.
Spiral nebulae observed at Lick Observatory were
hypothesized to be views of other suns with accretion
disks which had suffered this reaction. However, in 1926
Hubble revealed these nebulae to be galaxies, rather than
developing solar systems.

Challenges to the Theory

In 1917, James Hopwood Jeans argued that only a very
close approach of a second star was necessary to eject
material, instead of requiring solar prominences. In 1939,
Lyman Spitzer showed that a column of material drawn
out from the sun would dissipate rather than condense.

In the 1940s, the work of Henry Norris Russell showed that

if the solar material had been pulled away from the sun
with the force necessary to account for the angular
momentum of Jupiter, the material would have continued
out of the solar system entirely.

In 1944, Soviet astronomer Otto Schmidt proposed that

the Sun formed separately from the planets, and gained
it’s accretion disk by passage through a dense interstellar
cloud. This cloud then coalesced into planets. This concept
of planetary development by accretion
In this way the theory was slowly picked apart piece by
piece by the work of subsequent astronomers.

Though the Chamberlin-Moulton hypothesis is no longer

accepted, the idea of accreting planetesimals remains as
a vital part of modern theory.

Planetary Accretion Model / Solar Nebular Disk

Model[SNDM]
This is the current and most widely accepted hypothesis
for solar systems today, and can be traced to Soviet
astronomer Victor Safronov. In his model almost all major
problems of the planetary formation process were
formulated and some of them solved. Safronov's ideas
were further developed in the works of George Wetherill,
who discovered runaway accretion.

Initially, a cloud of interstellar gas and dust known as a

solar nebula is disturbed by a gravitational event. This
could be for example caused by the shockwave of a
nearby supernova. As the cloud collapses it compresses in
an area which collapses under it’s own gravity.

In the centre a T Tauri star forms. It is not yet a full star,

and gives off energy through violent gravitational
contraction, as it’s core is too cool for hydrogen fusion.
Their radii are usually larger thana main sequence star
which can make them significantly more luminous. This
star has a strong solar wind which begins to affect the
nebula.
Gravity causes heavy elements such as metals to migrate
towards the star due to their greater density, lighter
elements such as gasses to migrate towards the outer
edges of the solar system.

Material in this area is dense enough to begin the

hydrogen fusion process and a protostar is born. This
young and violent star further disturbs the materials and
gasses around it. It forms an accretion disk of orbiting
matter that spins around it. Though it absorbs much of
this material, centrifugal force keeps some of it in that
disk.

Over time the superheated disk radiates away much of it’s

energy and begins to cool. Now one of two things can
happen. This disk, if too massive can begin to compress
under it’s own gravity and become a binary star.

EXAMPLE: This is responsible for the commonly observed

binary star system, an example being Algol, located in
Perseus, an eclipsing binary system. Algol is made of a
primary star that is thought two have formed from the
bulk of the matter in it’s system, and a smaller secondary
star, which when its crosses in front of our line of site of
the primary, causing brightness to fall. The Arabs called it
the demon star for this unsettling observational ‘winking’
quality.

ALTERNATIVELY: If a binary system has not formed this

gas cools enough for it’s constituent parts to begin to
separate and condense.
Metal condenses almost as soon as the accretion disk
begins to form [current estimates based on isotope
observations of comets in our solar system put the figure
at 4.55-4.56 billion years ago]. Rock condenses a little
later [4.4-4.55 billion years ago in our solar system].These
dust particles begin to collide and accrete into larger
particles, going on until they begin to reach the size of
boulders or smaller asteroids
At this point some of the larger objects begin to acquire a
gravitational edge over the surrounding matter due to
their size.

They grow more massive at an exponential rate, as their

increased mass leads to increased attraction in a feedback
loop. Their growth depends on environmental factors such
as the distance from the local star, and the density of the
protoplanetary nebula.
The composition of these bodies is also affected by their
distances from the local star. For example, the distance of
which water freezes is important. This is the frost line.
Around the Jupiter’s orbit it is cold enough for ice to form.
The molecules that would be more gaseous in a warmer
environment freeze into grains and lumps. This changes
the distribution of material from a larger number of small
bodies, to a small number of large bodies.
In our solar system this is seen in the size jump between
Mars and Jupiter.

Around 1 million years after the protostar’s birth it is

believed it would begin to emit a strong solar wind, which
would remove most of the gas and loose matter from the
protoplanetary nebula.
Protoplanets with enough mass would be able to
gravitationally trap matter being expelled from the system
and become gas giants. Protoplanets too small for this
would not be able to achieve this and would be stripped
into rocky or icy bodies.

At this point the solar system is comprised of solid and

gaseous planetesimals of a large mass. Inevitably,
gravitational interactions between them cause the
occasional cataclysmic collision, and the more massive
colliders grow larger. These extreme events could possibly
produce the first comets and other objects with eccentric
orbits, as matter is forcibly ejected from collisions.

The more massive planets, for example Jupiter, show signs

of forming their own gravitational systems, which
resemble miniature solar systems. Heavier matter such as
dust and ice particles forming into ring and moon systems,
and with gas.

Many of the Jovian planets give off more heat than they
receive from the sun, this is believed to because they are
still contracting, which causes heat to be generated by
gravitational friction.

Challenges to Theory
This theory well explains how a solar system like ours
could potentially come into existence. A problem came in
the early 1990's when we discovered exosolar planets
(planets outside of our solar system that orbit other stars),
and it appears the vast majority of these solar systems
contain planets as massive, (and even several times more
massive), as Jupiter. They are better known to us as they
are easier to detect, due to their size. Very massive
planets often exert a noticeable wobble on their parent
star.

They are often found orbiting closer to their star than

Mercury orbits to the sun. These types of planets are
commonly referred to as "hot Jupiters".

These are a problem because Hot Jupiters contradict the

frostline. Theoretically gaseous objects of this size should
not be able to form so close to their sun. A possible
explanation for this is that hot Jupiters that form early in
the process are dragged towards the star by the accretion
disk which has not yet been shed from the system.

Other simulations have shown that the migration of a

Jupiter-sized planet through the inner protoplanetary disk
would not prevent formation of terrestrial [smaller, rocky]
planets.

More than 60% of the solid disk materials in the region are
scattered outward, including planetesimals and
protoplanets, allowing the planet-forming disk to reform in
the gas giant's wake. In this way it is suggested that
gravitational launching by hot Jupiters may be responsible
for the unexpected properties of the outer solar system.
After centuries, Angular Momentum remains still remains
a problem. An explanation has been offered;

Magnetic Breaking
The powerful magnetic fields and a strong solar wind of
magnetic Alfvén waves from violent T Tauri stars could be
a mechanism by which angular momentum gets
transferred from the star to the protoplanetary disc.
Another theory uses migrating planets as an explanation
for the unusual properties of the outer system. Planets
which were formed in a different accretion disk from the
sun should have a separate momentum retained from
their formation.

DISK INSTABILITY MODEL:

This new theory challenges the accretion model. Unlike

gaseous Jupiter and Saturn, Uranus and Neptune contain
large cores of rock and ice and only a relatively thin shell
of gas. Some Theorists speculate that beyond Saturn there
was never enough material to build such planets using
gravitational accretion. They state that Uranus and
Neptune either formed closer in and migrated outward, or
they were created by some other means.

Boss, the creator of this theory, postulated that core

accretion and disk instability models are not mutually
exclusive. It could be that core accretion works better
under certain circumstances, and disk instability in others.
Some scientists have suggested a theoretical hybrid
theory of both.
Denser, red rings near the centre of this unstable
disk simulation may be protected areas where
planets can start to form around a young star

Conclusion
A complete explanation for the formation of solar systems
is uncertain.
Current scientific consensus trends towards theories
developed from Laplace’s nebular hypothesis, such as the
hybrid theory and the disk instability model. These
theories retain the idea of an accretion disk but disagree
exactly on the specifics. Observations of extrasolar
planetary disks seem to confirm this.
 I believe that future developments in technology which
allow us to better observe exo-proto-planetary
development will probably result in the formation of better
theories.

Protoplanetary nebula observed in M42.

REFERENCES
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