Physical Geography
University of Rajasthan, Jaipur
Origin of the Earth
Inter-stellar Dust Hypothesis by Otto Schmidt
The interstellar dust hypothesis was put forward by
a Russian scientist, Otto Schmidt, in 1943 to explain the
complex problem of the origin of the Solar System and our
Earth. The outstanding feature of this hypothesis is that the
Earth and the Solar System are believed to have been formed
from particles of gas and dust, the origin of which is not
explained by Schmidt.
According to this theory, our Sun attracted dark
matter* scattered across the universe during its ‘galactic
revolution’*. This dark matter was called 'interstellar dust' by
Schmidt. Dark matter began to revolve around the primordial
rotating Sun after being attracted by the Sun during its galactic
revolution. It can be explained that initially the gaseous clouds
and dust particles were not well organized and stable and
hence they were moving around the Sun separately.
Gases, being lesser in volume, were more unstable
and less systematically arranged while dust particles, being
more in amount and quantity, were more stable and
systematically arranged. Thus, the dust particles combined and
condensed and turned into a flat disk which started revolving
around the Sun under the combined impact of three types of
motion e.g.
a) the rotational motion of the sun itself,
b) gravitational force exerted by the sun on the
disc and
c) the angular momentum of dark matter of the
disc.
