• Question: how was earth created?

    Asked by charmiluv1d to Alan, Deepak, Francesca, Lilly, Nick on 18 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Francesca Day

      Francesca Day answered on 18 Mar 2014:

      Great question! We think the Earth was formed from the same cloud of dust that formed the sun and all the other planets. The dust pulled itself together through its own gravity. Most of it went to form the sun, but some remained outside the main mass and formed the planets. Scientists are still working on the details though!

    • Photo: Nick Wright

      Nick Wright answered on 18 Mar 2014:

      Great question! We think the Earth was formed out of material left over from when the Sun formed. We know that when stars form they leave behind a disk of material that surrounds them and it is in this disk that we think planets like the Earth form. We have evidence of this because we can estimate the age of the Sun and the age of the Earth and we find that the ages are very similar, or sometimes we find that the Earth is a little younger than the Sun meaning that it formed after the Sun formed.

    • Photo: Alan Fitzsimmons

      Alan Fitzsimmons answered on 18 Mar 2014:

      It started with a huge cloud of gas and small rock particles in space. Gravity made the cloud get smaller and denser as it collapsed in on itself.

      The centre of the cloud became very hot and formed our star, the Sun.

      Some of the cloud didn’t fall into the centre but stayed in a disk orbiting around. That stuff became the planets, moons, asteroids and comets we see today, including the Earth.

      All if this happened 4,567 million years ago. The cool thing is that we can now see disks like this around nearby newly born stars, where planets are being made right now.

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