The Formation of Earth: From Supernova to Habitable Planet

KOMPAS.com – Earth is the third closest planet to the sun and the only planet known to have an atmosphere with free oxygen and an ocean of liquid water on the surface.

Therefore, Earth is so far the only planet that has life or is habitable.

Just like other terrestrial planets, Earth has a central core, a rocky mantle, and a solid crust.

Quoted from the NASA page, the earth consists of four main layers, starting with the inner core at the center of the earth, then covered by the outer core, mantle and earth’s crust.

Also read: Getting to know planets, their meaning and formation process

The inner core is a solid ball made of iron and nickel with a radius of around 1,221 kilometers with a temperature reaching 5,400 degrees Celsius.

It is surrounded by an outer core layer that is 2,300 kilometers thick, made of liquid iron and nickel.

Between the outer core and the crust is the mantle, the thickest layer. A mixture of hot and thick molten rock with a thickness of about 2,900 kilometers.

The outermost layer is the earth’s crust, on average about 30 kilometers deep on land. At the bottom of the ocean, the earth’s crust is thinner and extends about 5 kilometers.

Also read: What is the Process of Forming Oceans or Seas?

So, how did planet Earth form?

Initial event: supernova

Reporting from the Space.com page, billions of years ago, Earth and the entire solar system were completely unrecognizable, just a huge cloud of dust and gas.

Then a mysterious event, which according to common belief among scientists, was a distant star destroying itself and creating a supernova explosion.

This explosion disturbed the dust cloud, causing it to gather together, and form a rotating disk of gas and dust, otherwise known as a solar nebula (solar system nebula).

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The faster the cloud rotates, the more dust and gas is concentrated in its center, increasing the speed of the nebula.

Over time, the gravity at the center of the cloud becomes so strong that the hydrogen atoms begin to move more quickly and violently.

The hydrogen protons begin to combine, forming helium and releasing large amounts of energy.

This causes the formation of a star which is the central point of the solar system, namely the sun.

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The formation of the earth

The formation of the sun consumed more than 99 percent of the material in the nebula. Then, the remaining matter begins to coalesce into various masses.

Quoted from the National Geographic page, the dust cloud continues to rotate, and clumps of material continue to collide with other clumps.

Some of these clusters of matter grew large enough to maintain their own gravity, which led them to become planets and form the current solar system.

Earth is one of the four innermost terrestrial planets in the solar system, along with Mercury, Venus and Mars, which are relatively small and rocky.

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At first the earth’s temperature was very hot and most likely it consisted entirely of liquid magma. Over hundreds of millions of years, the earth began to cool so that oceans of liquid water formed.

Heavy elements began to sink through the oceans and magma went towards the center of the earth.

In this process, the earth differentiates into several layers, with the outer layer being a solid cover of relatively lighter material while the denser liquid material sinks towards the center.

Scientists believe that Earth, reached its current state in three distinct stages. The first stage, described above, is known as the accretion process.

Accretion is the formation of planets from particles in the solar system when they collide with each other to form increasingly larger objects.

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The next stage involved a proto-planet collision with the very young planet Earth. This is thought to have occurred more than 4.5 billion years ago.

The final stage of development was the bombardment of planet Earth with asteroids.

Earth’s early atmosphere likely consisted of hydrogen and helium. As the planet changed and the Earth’s crust began to form, volcanic eruptions often occurred.

These volcanoes pump water vapor, ammonia and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere around the earth. Gradually, oceans began to form, and eventually, primitive life evolved in these oceans.

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2023-09-26 12:15:00
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