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View compareHow the Solar System Formed Training Center
Ari Raider's Training Materials · Outer Space Odyssey · Training Center 4 of 6
How the Solar System Formed
Nebula Grotto is whirling hard enough to tear a strap off your pack — and a cloud like that is where a whole solar system starts, if you know the steps.
What you're training for
In Nebula Grotto, the gas and dust won't settle. It lies down into a disk for whoever can walk the five formation steps in order. Train here first; prove it in the simulation.
The science
- It starts as a cold cloud of gas and dust — a nebula, drifting for millions of years.
- Gravity pulls it inward, and as it shrinks it spins faster — like a skater pulling in their arms.
- The spin flattens it into a disk, and the crushed center gets so hot the Sun lights up.
- The leftover dust clumps into planets — which is why all eight orbit in nearly the same flat plane, in the same direction. The disk never went away; we're living in it.
Teach it today — a bowl of water and glitter
The spinning nebula. Stir glitter into a wide bowl of water and give it one strong circular stir. Watch: the swirl flattens, the glitter drifts into the middle and clumps in rings. That's gravity-and-spin doing in seconds what the nebula did in millions of years. Then have students draw the five steps as a comic strip.
Trained and ready? Prove it at Stop 4 — Nebula Grotto. Free, no logins, progress saved on the device.
Enter the Realm at Stop 4Resources in this training center
Worksheets, reading passages, flashcards and printables for this lesson are being added — new resources land here first. Get one email a month when they do, or browse the whole free library.
The hands-on half: the Outer Space Odyssey Adventure Kit puts six real specimens, six Digs, six Gemlings and the Realm map in your students' hands — $19.99, or $15 a student for classrooms.
More Outer Space Odyssey training
Mars & Surfaces · Planet Temperatures · Light & Shadow · Solar System Formation · Space Rocks · Comets · Enter the Adventure →