What is the history of the solar system? What were interpretations prior to the current ideas?
It all started with a cloud of gas. Due to gravity the clouds will start to shrink. In the core density and temperature will become high enough so that nuclear fusion can start. The gas cloud becomes a stable star. This is the present state of our Sun. Around the Sun a disk of gas and dust is left, containing about 1% of the mass of the Sun. In the inner part of the disk it is warm enough so that molecules like water, ammonia and methane tend to stay as gases and not produce grains and clumps and so on. And because they stay in gas form the radiation pressure from the Sun and the solar wind will push them outwards. Around the orbit of Jupiter it becomes cold enough for ice to form. The gaseous molecules can produce grains and lumps so there’s a lot of this less dense material around to accrete into planets. Jupiter and Saturn grew large enough to pull in great quantities of hydrogen and helium from the solar nebula. The inner planets accreted from grains containing heavier atoms like o
