Feature Earth

The Solar System’s Big Bang

Finding signs of a lost beginning

By Ron Cowen

- More than 2 years ago

Gone. Vanished. Lost.

FULL MOON The Clementine spacecraft took this portrait of the Moon’s near side in the mid-1990s. Bright lines emanate from Tycho crater (near bottom). Stereograph frame courtesy of R. Cowen; Inset Images: NASA
BIRTH OF A CATACLYSM
BIRTH OF A CATACLYSM | A simulation of the outer solar system’s early evolution known as the Nice model tracks the planets’ orbits from soon after the birth of the solar system through the period of late heavy bombardment and beyond.