Stephen Hawking - Formation of the Solar System
By WeAreStarStuff51
Summary
## Key takeaways - **Solar System: 26,000 Light Years from Milky Way Center**: Our solar system lies about 26,000 light years from the center of our galaxy The Milky Way or around 2/3 the way out. [00:00], [00:08] - **Ancient Star Explosion Seeded Nebula**: Long ago an ancient star exploded littering space with swirling clouds of the materials it had made while it lived and the heavier metals it created as it died. [00:32], [00:45] - **Gravity Assembled Earth from Stardust**: The tireless force of gravity started to pull it all back together and vast spirals of dust began to form and at the center of one of these a rocky planet called Earth started to take shape built of Stardust and assembled by gravity. [01:18], [01:44] - **Solar Wind Cleared Nebula Debris**: As the sun ignited it gave off a huge blast of solar wind a radioactive gust of energy this blew all the remaining dust and gas that was left over from the nebula out to the edge of the solar system which is why everything is nice and orderly today. [03:16], [03:27] - **Ordered Planets: Gas Giants Outside, Rock Inside**: In the outer reaches of the solar system we have the huge gas planets Jupiter Saturn Uranus and Neptune further in are the denser rockier planets Mercury Venus Mars and of course the Earth. [03:41], [03:52] - **Sun's Size Enables 8 Billion Year Burn**: Lucky for us the sun is 865,000 m in diameter or just the right size to burn consistently for a very long time 8 billion years long enough to allow the next development to take place life. [04:01], [04:12]
Topics Covered
- Stardust Forged Our Planets
- Solar Wind Ordered Solar System
- Sun's Size Enables Life
Full Transcript
[Music] our solar system the place we call home lies about 26,000 light years from the
center of our galaxy The Milky Way or around 2/3 the way out the story of how these huge planets
came to be orbiting an average yellow star is six billion years long and since we don't have that much time I'll speed it up a bit
[Music] it starts with a [Music] bag long ago an ancient star exploded
littering space with swirling clouds of the materials it had made while it lived and the heavier Metals it created as it died we know this because we can see
similar fields of dust out in space least today they are called nebuli and they are very
beautiful every nebula is different and in our case the clouds contained nitrogen and oxygen and iron and silica and all the other stuff needed to build
a world like ours then the tireless force of gravity started to pull it all back together and the heavy engineering that
produced planets [Music] began vast spirals of dust began to form
and at the center of one of these a rocky planet called Earth started to take
shape built of Stardust and assembled by gravity [Music] fast forward 100 million years and it
had grown into a giant board sweeping up billions of tons of celestial [Music]
debris this is where the Earth came from and therefore how you and I began but our planet would have remained a
large sterile ball of rock and metals and minerals forever were it not for one more event one more expression of the forces of
nature 93 million miles away at the heart of the giant nebula the pressure and temperature of a ball of hydrogen gas had become so great that the atoms were beginning to fuse
[Music] a new star our sun was coming to life as the sun ignited it gave off a
huge blast of solar wind a radioactive gust of energy this blew all the remaining dust
and gas that was left over from the nebula out to the edge of the solar system which is why everything is nice and orderly
today in the outer reaches of the solar system we have the huge gas planets Jupiter Saturn Uranus and Neptune
further in are the denser rockier planets Mercury Venus
Mars and of course the Earth lucky for us the sun is 865,000 m in diameter or just the right
size to burn consistently for a very long time 8 billion years long enough to allow the next development to take
place life
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