Jovian Planets Formation

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The planets in our solar system fall into two groups: the inner planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars) and the outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune). As the inner planets, mostly made of rocks, also include the planet Earth. For this reason, they are usually called terrestrial planets whereas the outer planets, where Jupiter is the largest planet of this group, are usually referred to as jovian planets, also called "gas giants."

The reason to why these planets fall into two categories goes back to the origin of the solar system's formation, introducing the nebular theory. This theory suggests that our solar system was born from the gravitational collapse of an interstellar cloud of gas and dust, known as the solar nebula. …show more content…
During the condensation process of the solar system's formation, hydrogen and helium remained gaseous while other materials condensed into solid "seeds" for building planets. In the warm inner region of the solar nebula, only metal and rock could condense, as opposed to the cold, outer regions, further away from the young sun, ices made from water, methane, and ammonia could also condense. This led to the differences in composition that we see today between terrestrial and jovian planets. Indeed, as warm temperatures allow only metal/rock "seeds" to condense in the solar system, cold temperatures allow "seeds" to contain abundant ice in the outer solar system. For this reason, the inner planets, closest to the sun, collide and stick together, attracted to one another by gravity, increasing their growth. Because of their near distance to the sun, the inner planets are built from metal and rocks. On the other hand, because ices were more abundant than rock in the outer planets due to they further distance to the sun and thus, low temperature, these planets ended up growing much larger than the inner planets. Due to their large masses, these giant planets were strong enough to capture and hold onto some of the

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