What is the protoplanet hypothesis?
Our Earth is estimated to have had at least 4 billion birthdays, and the Solar System is thought to be several million years older. The creation of the planets is a challenging problem, but so far science can offer only theories and hypotheses to explain the dramatic event. The probing instruments of science have revealed other solar systems, and perhaps most of our galaxy’s 100 billion stars may have planet families. The birth of a planetary system seems to be a common cosmic occurrence. So far we cannot prove how this happens, but science offers several theories that suggest explanations, most experts now favor a theory called the protoplanet hypothesis. It seems logical to suppose that the sun and its family condensed from a vast cloud of cosmic gases, and there is much evidence to support this idea. The protoplanet hypothesis is one of several theories that outline the stages by which the gaseous nebula gave birth to a seething sun with a family of orbiting planets and their moons.
