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The Solar System did not spring into being fully formed like Athena from the head of Zeus; instead it formed over tens of millions of years from a disk of gas and dust. Dust particles slowly sank toward the midplane of the disk and began sticking to one another, forming larger objects. When these particles reached kilometer sizes, their self-gravity began to speed up the process, resulting in planets. The planets with the strongest gravity, Jupiter and Saturn, were then able to capture gas directly from the disk. Most of the gas and dust, however, spiralled inward to form the central Sun. A tiny minority of bodies avoided all of these fates and remain today as rocky asteroids and icy comets. In the end, everything found in the Solar System - the Sun, planets, moons, asteroids, and comets - all originated from the same cloud of swirling gas and dust. For more information on planetary formation click here.
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