Models suggest something is wrong with our picture of the early solar system. Image courtesy of Panther Media Global / Alamy.
Joel Kontinen
According to evolutionary story, our solar system’s rocky planets – Mercury,
Venus, Earth and Mars – may have formed from two rings around the young sun,
rather than a single disc.
The inner
solar system may have formed differently from how scientist thought must have. For decades, researchers
have thought that according to evolution, the rocky planets formed from a single disc of
dust and debris in the early solar system, but new simulations indicate there
might have been two separate discs of material.
Models
featuring a single disc or ring of material around the young sun tend to
be unable to recreate several features of the solar system as we observe it.
For one, Earth seems to be made of two different kinds of rocks, which wouldn’t
make sense if they all came from the same ring.
Also,
single-ring models tend to end up with Mercury and Mars too big, Venus and
Earth too close together and the compositions of Earth and Mars too similar.
The real history of the planets can be read from the book of
Genesis, in which God made the planets and stars at one go.
Leah Crane 2026