The Sun, which appeared 4.6 billion years ago, was born of a nebula. The dust of this cloud probably clustered together gradually to give birth to our solar system with its nine planets, from the tellurics such as Venus, Mars or the Earth, and the gaseous giants such as Jupiter and Saturn and their procession of satellites, to Pluto at the farthest end of the solar system. Not forgetting the asteroids and comets … all organised into a gigantic cosmic ballet stretching over a distance 49 times longer than that between the Earth and the Sun.
|
|
