Notes Big Bang (universe) Nebular Hypothesis (our solar system) Formation of the Earth

The actual steps Quick steps: Planet formation Atmosphere formation Rain and Land formation Ocean formation Life & Oxygen formation

Step 1 More than 4 billion years ago, our sun was young and much hotter than it is now. The planets that we are familiar with today were still just a swirling cloud of rock and ice.

Step 2 Rock and ice particles swirling around outer space collided. As these violent, massive, high velocity collisions occurred, the material built up to begin to form our planet

Step 3 The collisions of rock that formed our Earth created so much heat and energy that they were like explosions. Our planet was scorching hot and melted rock.

Step 4 A large object, as big as Mars, struck our planet while it was still forming. It made a dent in the surface of baby Earth the size of an ocean and most of the object was swallowed up in the bottomless magma ocean it created. The collision also flung a small amount of rock into orbit. This debris quickly gathered itself into a ball, creating our moon.

Step 5 Even when the Earth’s surface cooled it remained an alien world for the next 700 million years. Magma continuously erupted out of the surface. Rafts of solid rock drifted in the magma.

Step 6 Gases hissed from the cooling rock on Earth’s surface—carbon dioxide, nitrogen, water vapor, and others—covering the planet in a poisonous atmosphere.

Step 7 As the temperature dropped on baby Earth clouds began to form and rain fell. The rain cooled the hot surface into solid rock. Some of the water pooled into bodies of water.

Step 8 Asteroids stopped hitting Earth and the sun shone. Oceans became deeper. About that time, single-celled, blue-green bacteria developed in the oceans. By the trillions, these microscopic organisms transformed the planet. They captured the energy of the sun to make food. Little by little they turned the poisonous atmosphere into breathable air.

Step 9 Today, billions of years later, heat left over from the planet’s formation still bursts out in volcanic eruptions. In some places, the same algae organisms still exist that first lived on Earth. These are the few clues we have to imagine what our Earth was like in the very beginning.

Video Watch the video on my webpage on the formation of Earth