In fact, it is the study of asteroids and comets that allows scientists to piece together this whole long story. These icy bits haven’t changed much at all since the solar systems formation. Way off in the outer reaches of the solar system are comets. There are still leftover remains of the early days though.Īsteroids in the asteroid belt are the bits and pieces of the early solar system that could never quite form a planet. Gas and icy stuff collected further away, creating the gas and ice giants.Īnd like that, the solar system as we know it today was formed. Rocky planets, like Earth, formed near the Sun, because icy and gaseous material couldn’t survive close to all that heat. Finally some of these objects became big enough to be spheres-these spheres became planets and dwarf planets. Big objects collided with bigger objects, forming still bigger objects. Our Sun was born!Įven though the Sun gobbled up more than 99% of all the stuff in this disk, there was still some material left over.īits of this material clumped together because of gravity. Explore the 3D world of Asteroids, Comets. They are a lot like a fossil record of our early solar system.
These chunks of rock, ice, and metal are leftovers from the formation of our solar system 4.6 billion years ago. When it collapsed, it fell in on itself, creating a disk of material surrounding it.įinally the pressure caused by the material was so great that hydrogen atoms began to fuse into helium, releasing a tremendous amount of energy. Our solar system’s small bodies asteroids, comets, and meteors pack big surprises. This cloud was part of a bigger cloud called a nebula.Īt some point, the cloud collapsed-possibly because the shockwave of a nearby exploding star caused it to compress.
Our story starts about 4.6 billion years ago, with a wispy cloud of stellar dust. It’s got all kinds of planets, moons, asteroids, and comets zipping around our Sun.īut how did this busy stellar neighborhood come to be?
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