What is our planetary home like?

We have our matriarch, the sun, our younger siblings, and our older ones, some of whom are already estranged, except for a few small, somewhat distant pests. They each accidentally throw rocks at each other from time to time, creating belts around them, not to mention their lovers, the moons. Anyway, leaving aside the silly analogies, let's get to the real thing.

Formed around 4.6 billion years ago, the Solar System is a source of fascination among scholars. This is because there are still many unsolved mysteries, even though we know a little about them. In this case, scientists know, but I don't know much. So let's learn a little more. Come with me.

The term planets refers to the group of celestial bodies that orbit the Sun. Among them, for example, are stars, asteroids, satellites, and dwarf planets, both gaseous and solid, like Earth.

It is not known for certain how planets form. The prevailing theory is that they are formed when a nebula collapses into a thin disk of gas and dust. A protostar forms at the core, surrounded by a rotating protoplanetary disk. Through accretion (a process of collisional coalescence), dust particles from the disk continually accumulate mass, forming increasingly larger bodies. Concentrations of mass, known as planetesimals, are formed, which accelerate the accretion process by attracting additional material with their gravitational force. These concentrations become increasingly dense until they collapse inward due to gravity, forming protoplanets. When a planet reaches a mass somewhat greater than that of Mars, it begins to accumulate an atmosphere, greatly increasing the frequency of planetesimal capture through atmospheric drag. Depending on the history of accretion of solids and gases, the result may be a giant planet, an ice giant, or a terrestrial planet.

The planets of the Solar System can be divided into categories based on their composition:

Terrestrial or Telluric or Terrestrial: Earth-like planets, with bodies mostly composed of rock: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. Earth is the largest and Mercury the smallest terrestrial planet.
Gas giants (Jovians): Planets composed mostly of gaseous materials, substantially larger than terrestrial ones: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Jupiter is the largest, with a mass 318 times that of Earth, and Saturn the second, with 95 times that of Earth.
Ice giants: Including Uranus and Neptune, they are a subclass of gas giants, distinguished from them by their much smaller mass (only 14 and 17 times that of Earth); they are composed primarily of low-boiling-point materials, such as water, methane, and ammonia, with thick atmospheres of hydrogen and helium.

Exploration of these smaller bodies has intensified in recent decades, with dedicated space missions visiting asteroids and comets, collecting samples, and analyzing their properties in situ. These missions, such as ESA's (European Space Agency) Rosetta and JAXA's (Japan Space Agency) Hayabusa2, have revolutionized our understanding of these celestial bodies and provided unprecedented data on their composition, structure, and physical processes. Furthermore, the threat of asteroid impacts with Earth has driven the development of detection and monitoring systems, as well as research into risk mitigation methods.

To systematize this diversity, we have:

Asteroids: Rocky, located mainly in the belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Comets: Icy, originating from the edges of the solar system (Oort Cloud, Kuiper Belt). Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs): Icy, located beyond Neptune.

Apparently, the following aspects for a better understanding of our solar system were understanding its formation, how it emerged from a solar nebula, the application of Kepler's laws to the understanding of the motion of planets around the Sun, along with concepts such as ellipses, variable velocity, and the period-size relationship. The influence of the Sun on how solar radiation affects the planets. The phases of the life cycle of stars and what the cycle of our Earth would be like. And observation and experiments through space missions.

Extra and something I just discovered:

The main difference between a dwarf planet and a "normal" planet lies in the ability of a "normal" planet to clear its orbit, that is, to become gravitationally dominant in its region of the Solar System. This means it has "swept" all other celestial bodies of similar size from its orbit. A dwarf planet, like Pluto, shares its orbit with other objects of comparable size and lacks this gravitational dominance.