<P> The formation and evolution of the Solar System began 4.6 billion years ago with the gravitational collapse of a small part of a giant molecular cloud . Most of the collapsing mass collected in the center, forming the Sun, while the rest flattened into a protoplanetary disk out of which the planets, moons, asteroids, and other small Solar System bodies formed . </P> <P> This model, known as the nebular hypothesis and now refined as the Nice model (2005), was first developed in the 18th century by Emanuel Swedenborg, Immanuel Kant, and Pierre - Simon Laplace . Its subsequent development has interwoven a variety of scientific disciplines including astronomy, physics, geology, and planetary science . Since the dawn of the space age in the 1950s and the discovery of extrasolar planets in the 1990s, the model has been both challenged and refined to account for new observations . </P>

When did the solar system begin to form