For a long time, scientists struggled to explain the formation of the solar system, like how our solid planet, Earth, emerged from a cloud of gas and dust.
Mystery of The Formation Of The Solar System And Viktor Safronov| Photo: Live Science
The prevailing theories of formation of the solar system in the 1950s proposed that a spinning cloud of gas and dust around the Sun broke into smaller clouds that eventually formed the planets, but no convincing explanation was provided.
However, in the late 1950s, Soviet mathematician Viktor Safronov took on the challenge of solving this problem of the formation of the solar system using mathematics.
Despite skepticism from his colleagues, Safronov meticulously estimated the effects of countless collisions between particles within the gas and dust disk orbiting the Sun.
He realized that these collisions caused particles to stick together and form larger clumps that eventually became the planets.
Safronov’s groundbreaking work, published in 1969, revolutionized our understanding of the formation of the solar system.
At the time, scientific study on the origin of planets was limited, and Safronov’s work remained relatively unknown due to the Cold War and the isolation of Russian scientists from the West, according to Teach Astronomy.
If not for the Cold War, Safronov’s results would have been published in international journals and had an immediate impact.
However, due to the competition and limited interaction between scientists in the East and West, his work was not widely acknowledged. It was not until 1972, when a translated version of his book was published, that Safronov’s ideas of the formation of the solar system gained global recognition.
Other scientists were initially hesitant to accept his theories of the formation of the solar system, but eventually, in 1984, it was agreed that impacts played a role in shaping the Moon and other features of the Solar System, Teach Astronomy added.
