How do atmospheres on planets get created, especially other ones besides earth?

1 Answer
Sep 23, 2017

Through accretion and collisions that happened early in our solar system's life.

Explanation:

We'll discuss how two types of planets got their atmospheres.: Gas giants such as Jupiter of Neptune and Terrestrial such as Earth and Mercury.

First, we have to discuss how our solar system formed. Where in the early Solar System. A new star has just been formed around it a disc of gas and dust orbits the newly created protostar called the Sun. The star blasts billions of sub-atomic particles called the Solar Wind.

This wind pushed the gas to the outer edges of the Solar System as well as some small dust particles. The gravity of these dust particles combined with 'sticky' ice particles formed kilometre sized planetesimals. The combined gravity of these planetesimals formed the terrestrial (rocky) and gas giant planets.

Now that we know how our Solar System formed we can discuss how the Gas Giants' atmospheres formed. Remember how the Solar wind blew the gas to the outer reaches of our solar system? Well, the gas is cold enough to accrete (to bind together onto the planetesimal due to gravity) of the newly formed planetesimals. This formed our gas giants.

The rocky planets are a little bit more complicated and took much longer.

As early We'll discuss how two types of planets got their atmospheres.: Gas giants such as Jupiter of Neptune and Rocky Planets such as Earth and Mercury.

First, we have to discuss how our solar system formed. Where in the early Solar System. A new star has just been formed around it a disc of gas and dust orbits the newly created protostar called the Sun. The star blasts billions of sub-atomic particles called the Solar Wind.

This wind pushed the gas to the outer edges of the Solar System as well as some small dust particles. The gravity of these dust particles combined with 'sticky' ice particles formed kilometre sized planetesimals. The combined gravity of these planetesimals formed the terrestrial (rocky) and gas giant planets.

Now that we know how our Solar System formed we can discuss how the Gas Giants' atmospheres formed. Remember how the Solar wind blew the gas to the outer reaches of our solar system?
The gas has become cold and so it can accrete onto the planetesimals forming the Gas giants' atmospheres. The low temperature made it easier to hold onto gases as they had a low escape velocity.

The terrestrial planets got their atmospheres from multiples collisions with other planetary embryos and planetesimals. As they also travelled through the solar nebula (the place where our solar system formed). These two occurrences formed the atmospheres' of the terrestrial planets. Outgassing added a cocktail of gases to the terrestrial planets' atmosphere/

Hope this helps!