solar nebula tagged posts

Depiction of the solar nebula dispersal in action about 3 million years after the solar system formed. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL

About 4.6 billion years ago, an enormous cloud of H gas and dust collapsed under its own weight, eventually flattening into a disk called the solar nebula. Most of this interstellar material contracted at the disk’s center to form the sun, and part of the solar nebula’s remaining gas and dust condensed to form the planets and the rest of our solar system. Now scientists from MIT and their colleagues have estimated the lifetime of the solar nebula – a key stage during which much of the solar system evolution took shape. This new estimate suggests that the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn must have formed within the first 4 million years of the solar system’s formation...

Researchers have calculated the dust chemistry of the solar nebula (thin dusty ring around young sun) Image credit: NASA/FUSE/Lynette Cook

Using sophisticated computer simulations, team has discovered new insights into the chemical composition of the dust grains that formed in the solar system 4.5 billion years ago. Researchers from Swinburne Uni of Technology, Melbourne and the Uni of Lyon, France, calculated a 2D map of the dust chemistry in the solar nebula, the thin dusty disk that surrounded the young sun and out of which the planet formed.

It is expected that refractories (high temperature materials) should be located close to the young sun, while volatile materials (such as ices and sulphur compounds) should form far from the sun where temperatures are cooler...