To this day astronomers don’t completely know how planets are formed.  They have a lot of ideas that may be on track but in the entire process, they can’t say for sure.

This description in a quick generalization was taken:

According to our current understanding, a star and its planets form out of a collapsing cloud of dust and gas within a larger cloud called a nebula. As gravity pulls material in the collapsing cloud closer together, the center of the cloud gets more and more compressed and, in turn, gets hotter. This dense, hot core becomes the kernel of a new star.

On the next page there is a video using data from ESO that gets more into depth on the potential details on this process.

Let’s find out more and check out this planetary dust video on page 2

Next Page »