Colliding Worlds How Cosmic Encounters Shaped Planets and Life [Audiobook]

English | ASIN: B09Q4GG4JC | 2022 | 6 hours and 17 minutes | MP3 | M4B | 172 MB
Some 4.6 billion years ago, a planetary system was born from a disc of gas and dust surrounding a young star. Specks of dust, pushed into dense clumps, collided, stuck together, and grew. While the gas disappeared, the growing bodies clashed in a final violent phase, leaving a series of planets, and much debris. The planets jostled and moved around as they sought a stable arrangement, knocking many small fragments out of the system altogether while others formed a distant icy fringe. The massive violent collisions of this time gouged out vast craters from the newborn planets, and sometimes created moons. Such was the birth of our Solar System. Only recently have scientists begun to find subtle clues of these ancient, violent times. Remarkably, they are still there, if we look carefully at the Earth's oldest rocks, at Mars and the Moon with their ancient surfaces, and at the asteroids, which are themselves startlingly varied small worlds.