Origins of our Solar System

Our Solar System was "born" out of the remnants of a SUPERNOVA!! Long ago a Red Supergiant star ended its "life" in a beautiful explosion which created all you can see today.

The last element made via NUCLEAR FUSION in the CORE of a red supergiant is IRON. A star cannot FUSE a heavier element in its core after IRON because it takes more energy than what is given out. Remember - A STAR SUSTAINS ITS THERMOSTATIC EQUILIBRIUM BY THERMAL PRESSURE RADIATING OUTWARDS FROM ITS CORE.

The IRON made in the core of the star is now in the cores of EARTH, MERCURY, VENUS, MARS, our MOON and many other Solar System occupants. Of course some Iron is on Earths surface and we use it for construction and many other uses. If we were to somehow tally up all the Iron that we know about, we could approximately establish the size of the core of the red supergiant star.

When the red supergiant went supernova, the outer layers were blown millions of miles outward. A star begins its life by fusing Hydrogen into Helium in its core. It would be a very long time before the Hydrogen would "clump" together to form our Sun. Of course there are other elements present in the composition of our Sun, such as Oxygen but 3/4 (75%) of our Sun would have been Hydrogen when it first begun nuclear fusion.

So now the picture is this. We have Hydrogen coming together to form the core of a new star born out of the supernova remnants.

Around this new star are all the other atoms that were scattered by the supernova explosion. All this "matter" would start to spin, like a large disc. This disc is not just one band though. Think of Saturns ring system, our Solar System is the same. All of these discs would be the future orbits of the planets and matter would accrete and accrete together.

As the Sun gathered mass it would therefore start to attract the heavier atoms and that is why the four inner planets are known as the rocky planets as they all have IRON cores and are made of heavier atoms. After the ASTEROID BELT, we find the outer GAS GIANTS which are made of much lighter elements.

Once NUCLEAR FUSION ignited in the Suns core all the dust was blown away from the orbiting "discs" and the planets could be seen. The orbits of our planets would settle with some affects from the Gravity of each other. Our Solar System is made. One could say that the Solar System is still evolving after 4.7 billion years.


Thanks, Adam King :-) X