physics question #1876

Alexis Rolling, a 10 year old female from Nampa, Alberta,Canada asks on January 28, 2004,

Q:

Why was Mars formed?
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the answer

Barry Shell answered on January 28, 2004, A:

Nobody knows why. The basic scientific thought on why stars and planets form is that gravity causes "clumping" of matter which was just swirling gas about 6 or 8 billion years ago. This is something that happens on a cosmic scale of billions of years and not something that we humans can easily comprehend.

There's an article in this month's Scientific American magazine about this.

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