First, just to say, as someone outside the US the word "created" in the question here had no biblical overtones for me, didn't even think of it until I saw the other answers. It is an acceptable word to use in a scholarly article on the topic. See for instance: Interstellar Gas and Star Creation - stars created by the collapse of gas and dust clouds.
So, anyway - on current understanding, the sun formed first. About the same time as the sun formed, the giant cloud began to condense into smaller objects. First dust grains. Eventually perhaps a meter or two across.
These Comet goose bumps found by Rosetta may be these very first small objects that formed in the early solar system - which then came together to form all the other things we see.
Then later these built up to form smaller asteroids and protoplanets. Then the protoplanets smashed together to form larger planets.
The largest gas giants like Saturn or Jupiter may have formed somewhat similarly to the sun. And then would have been hit by many protoplanets as they swept up all the gas in their neighbourhood.
Soon the sun would start to shine, and that swept all the smaller material from the inner solar system, and especially, it also melted any ice in the inner solar system. It's actually a bit of a mystery how Earth got so much water, because in theory it should be almost completely dry formed so close to the sun. But it probably got it from comets and other objects, larger protoplanets and asteroids from further out in the solar system hitting it. Measurements from Comet 67p show that its water has the wrong istope ratio for hydrogen to be the bulk of the water for early Earth. If all comets are like 67p (which is a bit of a projection at this stage) that leaves icy asteroid objects that formed closer to the sun as the more likely source for Earth's water.
The early solar system was probably very dynamic. There may have been a whole succession of gas giants that formed early on and spiralled in to the sun as it formed, and what we see now may be the very last phase of this, when there was no longer enough matter left to form new gas giants, so Jupiter, Saturn etc may be just the last gas giants of many that formed and then spiralled in and were destroyed. They survived because by then most of the material in between them had been swept away by the previous gas giants. This is a new idea based on the many observations of other stars with gas giants orbiting really close to the stars with orbits of just a few days - a surprise as there is no way they could form there. So they must have spiraled in like this. So then this idea now gets applied to the early solar system as well.
Moon itself formed at a late stage, from impact of a Mars sized body with a somewhat smaller proto Earth, with the Moon forming in the debris. Or - could be other ideas, anyway the Moon formed rather later than everything else and probably the Earth too. It's very dry, which suggests an impact origin as quite likely. A glancing blow probably.
Then, after it formed, it was hit by many large impacts which formed the craters and lunar Mare in the Late Heavy Bombardment
Artist's impression of Lunar cataclysm in late heavy bombardment by Tim Wetherell - Australian National University
This may have been caused by the late stages of the gas giant migration already mentioned. See Gas Migration
What I've described here is perhaps the most prevailing view. But there is much we don't know.
One of the things that hampers investigation is that we have very little by way of direct material to look at. Rosetta is the first mission to look really closely at an active comet - before then we didn't know about the goosebumps for instance. In the case of the Moon we have many samples but only from a small part of the Moon as all the Apollo astronauts landed in roughly the same general area of the Moon for safety reasons - the near side, and near to the equator. And they were all very short missions, and in the early ones the astronauts didn't travel far, and, again for safety reasons, the early ones required test pilots, basically, able to handle any emergency in extreme situations.
Only the last Apollo mission, Apollo 17, had a geologist aboard who would know which rocks would be most interesting to return and be able to read the landscape as a geologist. And the people back on Earth couldn't see what the astronauts could see clearly, to advise them, with the blurry low res video images.
So we don't really know that much about the Moon despite the large quantities of rocks returned. Lots of orbital data now, not so very high resolution though (we have better resolution images from orbit from Mars, and looked at with many more instruments from orbit, just because it has been given more attention with very capable orbiting satellites).
So, this is subject to change and there are competing theories.
Still would be generally agreed that
So, anyway - on current understanding, the sun formed first. About the same time as the sun formed, the giant cloud began to condense into smaller objects. First dust grains. Eventually perhaps a meter or two across.
These Comet goose bumps found by Rosetta may be these very first small objects that formed in the early solar system - which then came together to form all the other things we see.
Then later these built up to form smaller asteroids and protoplanets. Then the protoplanets smashed together to form larger planets.
The largest gas giants like Saturn or Jupiter may have formed somewhat similarly to the sun. And then would have been hit by many protoplanets as they swept up all the gas in their neighbourhood.
Soon the sun would start to shine, and that swept all the smaller material from the inner solar system, and especially, it also melted any ice in the inner solar system. It's actually a bit of a mystery how Earth got so much water, because in theory it should be almost completely dry formed so close to the sun. But it probably got it from comets and other objects, larger protoplanets and asteroids from further out in the solar system hitting it. Measurements from Comet 67p show that its water has the wrong istope ratio for hydrogen to be the bulk of the water for early Earth. If all comets are like 67p (which is a bit of a projection at this stage) that leaves icy asteroid objects that formed closer to the sun as the more likely source for Earth's water.
The early solar system was probably very dynamic. There may have been a whole succession of gas giants that formed early on and spiralled in to the sun as it formed, and what we see now may be the very last phase of this, when there was no longer enough matter left to form new gas giants, so Jupiter, Saturn etc may be just the last gas giants of many that formed and then spiralled in and were destroyed. They survived because by then most of the material in between them had been swept away by the previous gas giants. This is a new idea based on the many observations of other stars with gas giants orbiting really close to the stars with orbits of just a few days - a surprise as there is no way they could form there. So they must have spiraled in like this. So then this idea now gets applied to the early solar system as well.
Moon itself formed at a late stage, from impact of a Mars sized body with a somewhat smaller proto Earth, with the Moon forming in the debris. Or - could be other ideas, anyway the Moon formed rather later than everything else and probably the Earth too. It's very dry, which suggests an impact origin as quite likely. A glancing blow probably.
Then, after it formed, it was hit by many large impacts which formed the craters and lunar Mare in the Late Heavy Bombardment
This may have been caused by the late stages of the gas giant migration already mentioned. See Gas Migration
Lhborbits - Simulation showing Outer Planets and Kuiper Belt: a)Before Jupiter/Saturn 2:1 resonance b) Scattering of Kuiper Belt objects into the solar system after the orbital shift of Neptune c) After ejection of Kuiper Belt bodies by JupiterFor more about this see Nice model
What I've described here is perhaps the most prevailing view. But there is much we don't know.
One of the things that hampers investigation is that we have very little by way of direct material to look at. Rosetta is the first mission to look really closely at an active comet - before then we didn't know about the goosebumps for instance. In the case of the Moon we have many samples but only from a small part of the Moon as all the Apollo astronauts landed in roughly the same general area of the Moon for safety reasons - the near side, and near to the equator. And they were all very short missions, and in the early ones the astronauts didn't travel far, and, again for safety reasons, the early ones required test pilots, basically, able to handle any emergency in extreme situations.
Only the last Apollo mission, Apollo 17, had a geologist aboard who would know which rocks would be most interesting to return and be able to read the landscape as a geologist. And the people back on Earth couldn't see what the astronauts could see clearly, to advise them, with the blurry low res video images.
So we don't really know that much about the Moon despite the large quantities of rocks returned. Lots of orbital data now, not so very high resolution though (we have better resolution images from orbit from Mars, and looked at with many more instruments from orbit, just because it has been given more attention with very capable orbiting satellites).
So, this is subject to change and there are competing theories.
Still would be generally agreed that
- The Moon formed long after the Earth
- The Earth formed long after the Sun
- Something lead to a heavy bombardment of the inner solar system - Mercury, Mars, the Moon, moons, asteroids, all bear the scars of this early bombardment by large objects that no longer exist in such numbers in the solar system and what are left are generally in more or less stable orbits.
About the Author
Robert Walker
Writer of articles on Mars and Space issues - Software Developer of Tune Smithy, Bounce Metronome etc.Studied at Wolfson College, Oxford
Lives in Isle of Mull
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