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FormationOf1-TheSolarSystemAnd2-TheAsteroidBelt

Hello, I am Kushaagr Chawla, studying in Class V, Birla Vidya Niketan.

I have two questions.

1. How was the Solar System Formed?

2. How was the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter formed.

Thank You,

Kushaagr Chawla Thu May 15, 2008 10:16 am

Hi Kushaagr,

As far as I know, these are some very profound questions and there have been several contending theories about these.

The nebular hypothesis is probably the most well accepted theory on Solar system formation and you can read about that here:

http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/solarsys/nebular.html

Akarsh Thu May 15, 2008 11:02 am

Hello Kushaagr,

It smells like these are holiday homework questions :-)

Never mind, even at that, these are nice questions to think about. I will try and answer your questions little by little - but, mind, the language in which I will try to answer you, will not be suitable for you to directly use in your home work - you will need to understand whatever is being mentioned here and write it in your own words - thik hai? :-)

Let us take the first question - and everyone, please do add little by little, to whatever is posted on this, so that we can have an emerging picture of the formation of the solar system, understandable by a Class V student :-

So, Kushaagr,

It seems that right at the very beginning - no, no, not at the very beginning, but, somewhere along the way, there were a lot of clouds of gas and dust floating around in space.

These are not the kind of clouds that you see in the sky everyday - the clouds I am talking about are huge - simply huge - perhaps a few thousand times larger than our solar system and having a few thousand times more mass than our Sun. These clouds were mostly made of Gas - Hydrogen mostly - and some dust grains.

Material deep inside this cloud was pulled inwards, and started making itself into a denser ball of gas and dust than its surroundings.

Aisa kyoon hua?

Puree tarah se patah nahin.

The cloud had its own gravity that was pulling everything inside - maybe something else also pushed the material into condensing into a dense ball - and that is where the formation of the Solar System started.

Abhi kahani khatm nahin huee - aage bohut kuch hai. Maybe others will also add to this story and I will also mail again, adding to the story.

We will then start on the story of your asteroid belt.

Break ke baad :-)

Rathnasree, Nehru Planetarium, New Delhi Thu May 15, 2008 11:13 am

> The cloud had its own gravity that was pulling everything inside - > maybe something else also pushed the material into condensing into a > dense ball - and that is where the formation of the Solar System started.

Kushagr, this was where we stopped, break se pehle.

There was this huge cloud - some of its insides started collapsing and becoming denser.

For some reason or other, most such clouds that generally float about in space, have some small rotation to begin with - ''gol gol ghoomte rehete hain - bohut hi dheere dheere''.

As the insides of the cloud becomes denser and denser - it has to rotate faster and faster - it just HAS to.

Why? You will hear later, in senior classes, about something called angular momentum, jisko hum ched nahin sakte hain - it has to remain constant. It is because of this that the cloud insides will be rotating faster as it becomes smaller and denser.

Gravity is pulling the insides of the cloud deeper inside, gas in the cloud wants to push everything away, and the cloud is rotating - all of these things make the gas cloud flatten into something like a dosa with an idli (gol guppa or aloo bonda is better) in the middle.

Collapsing of the gas also makes its insides very hot. The gol guppa slowly becomes the hot Sun and the dosa becomes a rotating cloud of gas and dust that will slowly form the planets and other solar system bodies.

Sooraj ki garmi se ... hota kya hai?

Break ke bad.

Rathnasree, Nehru Planetarium, New Delhi Thu May 15, 2008 12:29 pm

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Page last modified on May 15, 2008, at 07:50 AM EST