What has determined the order of our planets?

Question

I understand that gravity keeps them in line, but what has determined how close they are to the sun? Is it the weight of the planets? Are the heaviest closest?

Answer 1

There are some formulas which can determine if a planetary system looks stable. If it is not stable, sooner or later, it must become chaotic. Some planets may disintegrate, collide, trade orbits, capture new moons, etc.

Our solar system may have been stable at one time, but the gas giants grew by capturing gas from the solar wind. This has caused an instability. Unfortunately, our computer models cannot see far enough into the future to determine what cataclysmic events may result, or far enough in the past to know if such events may have already happened.

Some scientists actually believe planets may have already changed orbits. One in particular believes that a planet just this side of Jupiter was torn apart by Jupiter's gravity, and that resulted Mars and Venus trading orbits. In fact, he believes this was recent enough to have been witnessed by humans.

Answer 2

David T has the best answer. The formation of the solar system was a very complex process that is not well understood and probably has a lot of randomness in it. There is nothing that says that the planets have to be in any order by size or composition. The planets closest in and farthest out are the smallest.

However, the distance of a given planet from the sun is mathematically determined by Kepler's third law, which gives a relation between the speed, mass and orbital radius. That is, for a given mass and speed of a planet, there is only one orbit that it can occupy. Once the planets were formed they had to occupy certain orbits, but their orbits may have shifted around while they were forming. This doesn't prescribe any order for the planets, though. A planet of any size can occupy any orbit, if it is travelling at the right speed.

Answer 3

Teh sun is teh center of our solar system, and we order the planets from the inside out. The weight of the planets has nothing to do with the planets distance from the sun because Jupiter is the heaviest, and it's in the middle of the planets. I think it is was determined that way because they were caught by the Sun's gravitational pull at a point, and now they are in orbit around the sun. Also, see, the univserse is expanding, but the gravitational pull on the planets from the sun is keeping them right where they are. That, is my theory.

Answer 4

Order Of Our Planets

Answer 5

Actually, the heaviest are NOT the closest. The planets close in are small and rocky.

Some scientists seem to think that it was the heat of the sun that prevented the bulky gas giants from forming close to the sun.

But no one really knows.

Answer 6

It just happened that way. When the solar system was created, gas and dust was swirling around the sun. The dust collected in clumps called planetesimals. Those grew and grew by picking up more and more dust. They eventually ate up all the dust and became large enough to be known as planets. Nothing determines where the planets are, they were just created in that order.

The reason the outer planets are bigger than the inner planets is because radiation from the sun, AKA The Solar WInd, blew all the gas away from the inner planets. The inner planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. The gas went to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. That's why the outer planets are so much bigger than the inner planets. All the gas collected on top of them.

Answer 7

In fact, the largest planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, are further out, with Jupiter the largest and Saturn the second largest.

Ultimately, we don't know why the sizes of the planets are the way they are except that the collisions and mergings that made the planets happened more towards the 'center' of the distribution.

Answer 8

There is no 'exact science' to the way the planets formed. It just happened that way. The general rule is that gas giants form further away from their parent star and rocky planets closer although this is not a 'hard and fast' rule.

Answer 9

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