The Solar System within our Milky Way Galaxy by Ernesto Hernández

Right after the Big Bang

davemoo04071 — 2024-09-02 13:25:50 UTC

In the first moments after the Big Bang, the universe was extremely hot and dense. As the universe cooled, conditions became just right to give rise to the building blocks of matter, the quarks and electrons of which we are all made.

A few millionths of a second later, quarks aggregated to produce protons and neutrons. Within minutes, these protons and neutrons combined into nuclei.

As the universe continued to expand and cool, things began to happen more slowly. It took 380,000 years for electrons to be trapped in orbits around nuclei, forming the first atoms.

Galaxy formation period

davemoo04071 — 2024-09-02 13:26:10 UTC

Astronomers believe that some of the oldest galaxies observed formed when the the universe was only about a billion years old. Those galaxies started to grow around pockets of space that were slightly denser than their surroundings, an effect created by cosmic inflation when the universe began.

It isn’t exactly know as which came first and the order of formation.

Most big galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centers that contain hundreds of thousands to billions of times the Sun’s mass. A black hole weighing 4 million Suns sits in the center of our own , the Milky Way.

It’s possible that the black holes came first, and galaxies grew around them. Or the galaxies came first, and small black holes within them merged and fed on gas, dust, and stars, eventually becoming the entities they are as of now.

Birth of the Sun

davemoo04071 — 2024-09-02 13:26:20 UTC

The Sun formed about 4.6 billion years ago in a giant, spinning cloud of gas and dust called the solar nebula. As the nebula collapsed under its own gravity, it spun faster and flattened into a disk.

Most of the nebula's material was pulled toward the center to form our Sun, which accounts for 99.8% of our solar system’s mass. Much of the remaining material formed the planets and other objects that now orbit the Sun. (The rest of the leftover gas and dust was blown away by the young Sun's early solar wind.)

Like all stars, our Sun will eventually run out of energy. When it starts to die, the Sun will expand into a red giant star, becoming so large that it will engulf Mercury and Venus, and possibly Earth as well.

Scientists predict the Sun is a little less than halfway through its lifetime and will last another 5 billion years or so before it becomes a white dwarf.

Formation of the Earth

davemoo04071 — 2024-09-02 13:26:36 UTC

After the supernova, scientists define the formation of Earth in three different stages. The first stage is known as accretion. This is when particles within the solar system crash into each other and stick together. They form larger and larger bodies.

During the next stage, a protoplanet crashed into the very young planet Earth. The crash happened more than 4.5 billion years ago. It may have formed the moon.

In the final stage, the planet was hit by many asteroids. Scientists think the asteroids that slammed into Earth, the moon, and other inner planets held a lot of water. The asteroids hit at a great speed, shattered and melted. Some of the water in the asteroids stayed on Earth.

Formation of the Moon

davemoo04071 — 2024-09-02 13:42:13 UTC

Several theories about our Moon’s formation vie for dominance, but almost all share that point in common: near the time of the solar system’s formation, about 4.5 billion years ago, something perhaps a single object the size of Mars, perhaps a series of objects crashed into the young Earth and flung enough molten and vaporized debris into space to create the Moon.

The early solar system would have been a chaotic, terrifying place. Debris left over from the formation of the Sun coalesced into a disk around the star, creating clumps that ranged in size from dust flecks to minor planets.

Gravity drew these objects together, causing them to crash into each other violent smashups that could end in obliteration or new, larger objects. Those mashed-together objects make up the planets, moons, asteroids and other solar system objects we know today.

Sources

ernohernandez — 2024-09-02 13:51:56 UTC

Formation - NASA Science. (n.d.). https://science.nasa.gov/moon/formation/

Evolution - NASA Science. (n.d.). https://science.nasa.gov/universe/galaxies/evolution/

Formation of Earth. (n.d.). https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/formation-earth/5th-grade/

Sun: Facts - NASA Science. (n.d.). https://science.nasa.gov/sun/facts/

The early universe. (2024, August 30). CERN. https://home.cern/science/physics/early-universe

Made by

ernohernandez — 2024-09-02 13:57:39 UTC

Hernández Badillo Ernesto

Martínez Mondragón David Alberto