Validation of the Protoplanetary Theory of Solar System Formation

Kant’s 1755 hypothesis on the origin of the sun and planets, as modified by Laplace, foreshadowed the modern protoplanetary theory of planet formation in which planets were thought to form at very high pressures from within giant gaseous protoplanets. The protoplanetary theory was popular in the 1940s and 1950s, but was abandoned and ignored by phenomenological model-makers in the early 1960s who favored the planetesimal theory, the idea that planets formed by the progressive accumulation of dust that had condensed at very low pressures. Here, I validated the protoplanetary theory by: