Which thinker formalized a description of a cooling, rotating nebula shedding rings to form planets in the late 18th century?
Answer
Pierre-Simon Laplace
The foundational structure of the nebular theory owes much to historical contributions, particularly that of Pierre-Simon Laplace. In the latter part of the 18th century, Laplace developed a significant iteration of this model. His formulation described how a massive, cooling, and contracting nebula would sequentially shed concentric rings of material as it spun. These rings were theorized to subsequently condense and coalesce gravitationally, eventually forming the individual planets orbiting the central mass. This provided a comprehensive, naturalistic framework that superseded older, less plausible collision-based scenarios.
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