answersLogoWhite

0

Stars came first. These coalesced from clouds of primordial hydrogen. Primordial means primeval, or existing from the beginning. There were no stars, just a hot expanding cloud of gas.

The gas formed knots and clumps, and these coalesced into protostars. A protostar is a star that emits light via gravitational collapse alone. Infalling matter, sucked in by the star's accumulating mass, would heat up by friction and pressure. Eventually the core of each of these protostars became hot enough for the hydrogen to fuse to helium. In bigger stars, helium fusion would eventually give way to fusion of heavier and heavier elements, ending with iron.

The biggest stars would collapse, and the collapse would result in a tremendous burst of energy flinging all these elements back out into space, while slamming atomic nuclei together to synthesize heavier elements, ranging from iron to uranium.

The collapse of circumstellar disks of such debris would result in stars orbited by "rocky" planets like Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, gas giants (hydrogen and helium not pulled into the star), rings of more distant icy objects like the Kuiper Belt, and shells of more distant objects yet like the Oort Cloud.

User Avatar

Wiki User

12y ago

What else can I help you with?