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A couple of years ago, Netflix added a science series about the Universe, and I could not understand why they referred to the process behind planet and star for
by papito 5y ago
A couple of years ago, Netflix added a science series about the Universe, and I could not understand why they referred to the process behind planet and star formation as a mystery. We know that dust, left to just float in space, will create clumps, rocks, boulders, and so on - due to microgravity.
The series was from the mid 2000s.
No one suggested this very obvious process until an astronaut on the ISS had a fine-grain substance in a small plastic bag (no, not THAT one), and they noticed the grains stuck together.
- pleb_nz 5y agoInteresting as I thought that the theory was quite old. Certainly sure I believed that well before the mid 2000s. And a quick search on DDG says that theory was first proposed in 1941 referring to plant formation?
- cgriswald 5y agoYou're sort of conflating what scientists are pretty sure about in a general sense and what they actually know about how it works in the specifics. Take a look at the wikipedia page for this topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebular_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebular_hypothesis Just as an example: > The formation of planetesimals is the biggest unsolved problem in the nebular disk model. How 1 cm sized particles coalesce into 1 km planetesimals is a mystery. This mechanism appears to be the key to the question as to why some stars have planets, while others have nothing around them, not even dust belts.