Our planet Earth may have formed within the span of just 3 million years, contrary to what the scientific community thought in the past. A new research study published in Nature has revealed a fresh perspective regarding how our planet formed and how gigantic water sources came into being in the first place.
Pebble Accretion Theory
According to the new theory known as the pebble accretion, the planets before they are even planets, were nothing but dust and gas orbiting the sun. The sun wasn’t as big as we see it today but it was enough to pull the dust particles to itself. As time passed, the dust particles including many icy particles were sucked up by the infant earth like a vacuum cleaner.
The Theory is Still Controversial
The new theory may have the capacity to explain huge gas giants in the solar system like Jupiter, but it is still lacking to answer questions related to the origin of the pebbles or the dust particles in the first place. Other conventional theories suggest that water on earth is due to the collision of asteroids due to which the structures got bigger and bigger and eventually formed planets.