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Solar System Lab Report

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There a many hypotheses explaining how the solar system formed. In science class, we learned about three hypotheses explaining the formation of the solar system. We learned about the nebular, protoplanet, and planetisemal hypotheses. In the nebular hypothesis, the solar system started out as a cloud. The cloud of gas cooled and shrank into a sphere. The law of conservation of angular momentum caused the sphere to spin faster. Centrifugal forces caused some of the matter to fly off of the sun. This matter formed a ring around the sun. The matter that was originally a part of the sun cooled and condensed into the planets. One problem with the nebular hypothesis is that an unreasonably large amount of gravitational pull would be needed to condense the rings of matter into planets. Also, the Sun, although containing most of the mass in the solar system, has only a small fraction of the angular momentum. …show more content…

It started five billion years ago as a cloud of dust and gas about 10 billion kilometers in diameter that rotated slowly in space. This massive cloud shrank over time because of its own gravitational pull, or because of an exploding passing star. Most material collected in the center and it rotated faster as it shrank. Compression of the material made it hotter, which started hydrogen fusion, forming the sun. Ten percent of the material in the cloud formed a disk around the sun. Due to friction in the disk, most of the mass collected into whirlpools. These whirlpools shrank to form protoplanets. These protoplanets became planets and moons. Excess material became comets, asteroids, and meteoroids. A problem with this hypothesis is that it would be unlikely for a passing star to explode, because stars are very far apart from each other. Also, as with the nebular hypothesis, it would take an unreasonable amount of gravitational pull for the disk to condense into

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