Summary of Project: The Birth of Our Solar System

Our Solar System was born approximately about 4.5 billion years ago from a huge cloud of space dust and gasses. The very center of our solar system, the sun, was created by a nebula. A nebula is an interstellar cloud of dust, hydrogen, helium and other ionized gases. A shock-wave of some sort, triggered the cloud of dust and gas to start binding together, eventually forming a star. But not all of the dust from the nebula turned into our sun. Some formed the planets by swirling around into a spherical shape. Electrostatic forces or carbon coatings caused them to stick to one another and build up on each other. Mutual gravity eventually brought them together into the formation of a planet. Dust and some gasses primarily made up the terrestrial planets, while primarily gasses made up the Jovian planets. But our solar system won't last forever. The sun, being a star, will eventually evolve into other forms of stars as their "life cycle" goes on. Eventually the sun will become so large that it will essentially set the entire Earth on fire and then consume it. But that's won't happen for a few billion years, so we don't have much to worry about. Everything in the solar system, including us, was created from some space dust. Isn't that remarkable? Our entire planet, all of the living organisms, and several other planets were created out of nothing but dust floating around in space that had been disturbed.