Scott Tremaine, “Astrophysical Wonders” (Open Agenda, 2021)
New Books in Science, Technology, and Society
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Is There a Theory of the Solar System Formation?
Our best guess is thata stars formed from collapse ind gas clouds in the interstellar gas. They were left with a spinning disc of material around them. The next step would be to argue that as the disk settles down, it starts to cool off. Once it cools enough, built below a thousand degrees or so, the heavy elements begin to condense out. When they condense out, you get small grains of material that settle into the mid plane of the disk. And because they're much denser than the gas, and they're dense enough that they can begin to stick. These small grains then gradually build up larger and larger bodies. Now, starting with a grain that's maybe
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