How Grains Become Giants #astronomy #shorts

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]For most of modern astronomy, the go-to [music] theory for planet formation was a process called core accretion. It all starts inside a huge, spinning cloud of gas and dust [music] around a brand new star. We call this a protoplanetary disc. Inside this disc, microscopic [music] dust grains, no bigger than smoke particles, start sticking together.

[00:00:22]Think of it like snowflakes bunching [music] up to make a bigger, heavier clump.

[00:00:27]Over millions of years, this just keeps happening. Dust becomes pebbles, [music] pebbles become rocks, rocks become boulders, and those boulders grow into kilometer-sized bodies we [music] call planetesimals. These planetesimals are the real seeds of planets.