Most of these are facts that are covered in school – but one question remains untouched: why? Why do none of the planets orbit in the other direction? Why do all of the orbits neatly line up, rather than being oriented at random? Why are none of the gas giants closer to the Sun, and why are none of the terrestrial ones further away? All of this has to do with how the planets formed in the first place.
In the beginning...
Our solar system started as a spinning cloud of dust and gas. As the cloud began to collapse under gravity, it span faster, due to conservation of angular momentum. This spinning caused it to collapse into a disk. This is because the existing angular momentum stops the cloud collapsing inwards, but there's nothing stopping it collapsing onto the plane of rotation. Imagine spinning holding a ball on a string – it's easy to move it up or down, but harder to pull it towards you.
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What happens next?
So far we have a spinning disk of hot gas and dust, and a star in the centre. Over time the gas cooled and molecules began to condense into small solid grains. These then collided to form larger clusters, which eventually formed clumps of rock. Once the rocks got large enough, they attracted each other via gravity and formed the planets. This process is known as accretion.
Terrestrial planets and gas giants
Close to the Sun, only the heavier elements could condense into solid particles, which meant that the planets took a long time to form, as there wasn't much matter around. By this time most of the light gas in the disk (hydrogen and helium) had escaped, which is why the inner planets lack large hydrogen/helium envelopes.
On the other hand, far from the Sun, the temperature was low enough that ices (mostly water, ammonia and methane) could form on the grains (the distance from the Sun at which this happens is known as the frost line ). This made the grains much more massive, allowing the planets to form relatively quickly2. As a result, the outer planets were large enough early enough to gravitationally attract and hold a large amount of gas, which is why they have an icy core and a gas envelope.
One interesting caveat is that large, gaseous planets have been observed close to their parent stars, within the frost line. They are thought to have formed in the outer disk and then migrated inwards later on.
Wrapping up
At this point, our initial questions about the solar system have been answered: the planets all orbit in the same manner due to the “spinning disk” origin, and the large icy planets are further out because it was too hot closer to the sun. The next episode will taking a closer look at the workings of the Sun, and stars in general.
1Fusion in layman's terms: Two atoms smash together so violently that they fuse to form a new, heavier atom, releasing energy in the process. This is how stars “burn”. (More on this in part II! :D)
2“Quickly” in this case means in the order of 10 million years.