My Wonder Question; How Did Planets Form?

Bronwyn de Boer

June 6, 2023

Mrs. Brandsma

How did planets form?

There is no confirmation about how planets form but there are many theories. This project is going to be about researching how planets came to be, unfortunately there is no evidence how our universe began and what was in it, but there is very well-educated guesses from reliable sources. The theories I will be talking about are NASA’s and the National Geographics hypothesis and how I form my own theory.

I will first be discussing NASA’s theory which is; Scientists believe planets started as grains of dust in a disk which surrounds a young star. When a young star is in its T Tauri phase (a disk forms around the star), it begins to release very hot winds full of positively charged particles. In these winds the material from the disk is still falling onto the star but occasionally the materials crash into each other to form larger debris. The large debris turn into pebbles, those pebbles become larger rocks that mash into each other to expand. For the materials to stick together and become solid it requires the presence of gas. Scientist Joel Green states that, “Planets are essentially the crumbs that don’t end up in the star.” This is my favourite theory that I have read because it explains everything so well that it sounds if it could be real.

The second theory that will be discussed is The National Geographics which they believe that planets started as remaining material from a nebula that helped form the sun. The material was still spinning, and materials continuously collided together and occasionally the materials grew to be large enough for their own gravitational pull which resulted with them becoming into planets and/or dwarf planets. The national geographics theory is a little harder to believe because they do not explain everything very well and it is not very evidence supported.

After learning about the hypothesis that NASA and National Geographic has provided, I am going to make my own theory of how planets came to be. I believe that multiple stars began to form at different times to form the different planet. The stars that were just beginning has dust and particles moving around the star in circles, some of the debris connect with the star to increase in size but, rarely, the debris connect with each to form a debris ball. Over a long period of time the gravitational pull of the star is not strong enough to hold the soon-to-be-planet and lets the planet float away. If the planet is close enough to the sun it begins to be pulled into the sun’s gravitational pull and the planets began to form differently depending on how close to the sun, they are. This theory is formed from my own opinion and in no way true, but it is an educated guess made from other theories that are reliable resources.

After reviewing two official theories from reliable websites, I formed my own theory that makes the most sense to me. The main differences between the two websites theories are that NASA believes planets came from dust around new stars, and National Geographic believes particles left over from the sun’s formation can turn into planets. Commonalties they share is that materials clumped together from spinning around. The theory I believe in most is NASA because space is their speciality and their research focuses more on it, the National Geographic focuses more on common definitions of space and earth.

Work Cited:

National Geographic Society. “Formation of Earth.” National Geographic, 2 June 2022, https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/formation-earth/

Brennan , Pat. “How Do Planets Form? – Exoplanet Exploration: Planets beyond Our Solar System.” Exoplanet Exploration, 15 June 2023, https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/faq/43/how-do-planets-form/

NASA/JPL-Caltech/J. Thompson. “Chapter 2: From Cloud to Disk.” Exoplanet Exploration , 14 Dec. 2018, https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/life-and-death/chapter-2/