catastrophic hypothesis formation

Universe Today

Space and astronomy news

How Was the Solar System Formed? – The Nebular Hypothesis

Since time immemorial, humans have been searching for the answer of how the Universe came to be. However, it has only been within the past few centuries, with the Scientific Revolution, that the predominant theories have been empirical in nature. It was during this time, from the 16th to 18th centuries, that astronomers and physicists began to formulate evidence-based explanations of how our Sun, the planets, and the Universe began.

When it comes to the formation of our Solar System, the most widely accepted view is known as the Nebular Hypothesis . In essence, this theory states that the Sun, the planets, and all other objects in the Solar System formed from nebulous material billions of years ago. Originally proposed to explain the origin of the Solar System, this theory has gone on to become a widely accepted view of how all star systems came to be.

Nebular Hypothesis:

According to this theory, the Sun and all the planets of our Solar System began as a giant cloud of molecular gas and dust. Then, about 4.57 billion years ago, something happened that caused the cloud to collapse. This could have been the result of a passing star, or shock waves from a supernova, but the end result was a gravitational collapse at the center of the cloud.

From this collapse, pockets of dust and gas began to collect into denser regions. As the denser regions pulled in more and more matter, conservation of momentum caused it to begin rotating, while increasing pressure caused it to heat up. Most of the material ended up in a ball at the center while the rest of the matter flattened out into disk that circled around it. While the ball at the center formed the Sun, the rest of the material would form into the protoplanetary disc .

The planets formed by accretion from this disc, in which dust and gas gravitated together and coalesced to form ever larger bodies. Due to their higher boiling points, only metals and silicates could exist in solid form closer to the Sun, and these would eventually form the terrestrial planets of Mercury , Venus , Earth , and Mars . Because metallic elements only comprised a very small fraction of the solar nebula, the terrestrial planets could not grow very large.

In contrast, the giant planets ( Jupiter , Saturn , Uranus , and Neptune ) formed beyond the point between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter where material is cool enough for volatile icy compounds to remain solid (i.e. the Frost Line ). The ices that formed these planets were more plentiful than the metals and silicates that formed the terrestrial inner planets, allowing them to grow massive enough to capture large atmospheres of hydrogen and helium. Leftover debris that never became planets congregated in regions such as the Asteroid Belt , Kuiper Belt , and Oort Cloud .

Within 50 million years, the pressure and density of hydrogen in the center of the protostar became great enough for it to begin thermonuclear fusion. The temperature, reaction rate, pressure, and density increased until hydrostatic equilibrium was achieved. At this point, the Sun became a main-sequence star. Solar wind from the Sun created the heliosphere and swept away the remaining gas and dust from the protoplanetary disc into interstellar space, ending the planetary formation process.

History of the Nebular Hypothesis:

The idea that the Solar System originated from a nebula was first proposed in 1734 by Swedish scientist and theologian Emanual Swedenborg. Immanuel Kant, who was familiar with Swedenborg’s work, developed the theory further and published it in his Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens  (1755). In this treatise, he argued that gaseous clouds (nebulae) slowly rotate, gradually collapsing and flattening due to gravity and forming stars and planets.

A similar but smaller and more detailed model was proposed by Pierre-Simon Laplace in his treatise Exposition du system du monde (Exposition of the system of the world), which he released in 1796. Laplace theorized that the Sun originally had an extended hot atmosphere throughout the Solar System, and that this “protostar cloud” cooled and contracted. As the cloud spun more rapidly, it threw off material that eventually condensed to form the planets.

The Laplacian nebular model was widely accepted during the 19th century, but it had some rather pronounced difficulties. The main issue was angular momentum distribution between the Sun and planets, which the nebular model could not explain. In addition, Scottish scientist James Clerk Maxwell (1831 – 1879) asserted that different rotational velocities between the inner and outer parts of a ring could not allow for condensation of material.

It was also rejected by astronomer Sir David Brewster (1781 – 1868), who stated that:

“those who believe in the Nebular Theory consider it as certain that our Earth derived its solid matter and its atmosphere from a ring thrown from the Solar atmosphere, which afterwards contracted into a solid terraqueous sphere, from which the Moon was thrown off by the same process… [Under such a view] the Moon must necessarily have carried off water and air from the watery and aerial parts of the Earth and must have an atmosphere.”

By the early 20th century, the Laplacian model had fallen out of favor, prompting scientists to seek out new theories. However, it was not until the 1970s that the modern and most widely accepted variant of the nebular hypothesis – the solar nebular disk model (SNDM) – emerged. Credit for this goes to Soviet astronomer Victor Safronov and his book Evolution of the protoplanetary cloud and formation of the Earth and the planets (1972) . In this book, almost all major problems of the planetary formation process were formulated and many were solved.

For example, the SNDM model has been successful in explaining the appearance of accretion discs around young stellar objects. Various simulations have also demonstrated that the accretion of material in these discs leads to the formation of a few Earth-sized bodies. Thus the origin of terrestrial planets is now considered to be an almost solved problem.

While originally applied only to the Solar System, the SNDM was subsequently thought by theorists to be at work throughout the Universe, and has been used to explain the formation of many of the exoplanets that have been discovered throughout our galaxy.

Although the nebular theory is widely accepted, there are still problems with it that astronomers have not been able to resolve. For example, there is the problem of tilted axes. According to the nebular theory, all planets around a star should be tilted the same way relative to the ecliptic. But as we have learned, the inner planets and outer planets have radically different axial tilts.

Whereas the inner planets range from almost 0 degree tilt, others (like Earth and Mars) are tilted significantly (23.4° and 25°, respectively), outer planets have tilts that range from Jupiter’s minor tilt of 3.13°, to Saturn and Neptune’s more pronounced tilts (26.73° and 28.32°), to Uranus’ extreme tilt of 97.77°, in which its poles are consistently facing towards the Sun.

Also, the study of extrasolar planets have allowed scientists to notice irregularities that cast doubt on the nebular hypothesis. Some of these irregularities have to do with the existence of “hot Jupiters” that orbit closely to their stars with periods of just a few days. Astronomers have adjusted the nebular hypothesis to account for some of these problems, but have yet to address all outlying questions.

Alas, it seems that it questions that have to do with origins that are the toughest to answer. Just when we think we have a satisfactory explanation, there remain those troublesome issues it just can’t account for. However, between our current models of star and planet formation, and the birth of our Universe, we have come a long way. As we learn more about neighboring star systems and explore more of the cosmos, our models are likely to mature further.

We have written many articles about the Solar System here at Universe Today. Here’s The Solar System , Did our Solar System Start with a Little Bang? , and What was Here Before the Solar System?

For more information, be sure to check out the origin of the Solar System and how the Sun and planets formed .

Astronomy Cast also has an episode on the subject – Episode 12: Where do Baby Stars Come From?

Share this:

• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)

5 Replies to “How Was the Solar System Formed? – The Nebular Hypothesis”

So… the transition from the geocentric view and eternal state the way things are evolved with appreciation of dinosaurs and plate tectonics too… and then refining the nebular idea… the Nice model… the Grand Tack model… alittle more? Now maybe the Grand Tack with the assumption of mantle breaking impacts in the early days – those first 10 millions years were heady times!

And the whole idea of “solar siblings” has been busy the last few years…

Nice overview, and I learned a lot. However, there are some salient points that I think I have picked up earlier:

“something happened that caused the cloud to collapse. This could have been the result of a passing star, or shock waves from a supernova, but the end result was a gravitational collapse at the center of the cloud.”

The study of star forming molecular clouds shows that same early, large stars form that way. In the most elaborate model which makes Earth isotope measurements easiest to predict, by free coupling the processes, the 1st generation of super massive stars would go supernova in 1-10 million years.

That blows a 1st geeration of large bubbles with massive, compressed shells that are seeded with supernova elements, as we see Earth started out with. The shells would lead to a more frequent 2nd generation of massive stars with a lifetime of 10-100 million years or so. These stars have powerful solar winds.

That blows a 2nd generation of large bubbles with massive, compressed shells, The shells would lead to a 3d generation of ~ 500 – 1000 stars of Sun size or less. In the case of the Sun the resulting mass was not enough to lead to a closed star cluster as we can see circling the Milky Way, but an open star cluster where the stars would mix with other stars over the ~ 20 orbits we have done around the MW.

“The ices that formed these planets were more plentiful”.

The astronomy course I attended looked at the core collapse model of large planets. (ASs well as the direct collapse scenario.) The core grew large rapidly and triggered gas collapse onto the planet from the disk, a large factor being the stickiness of ices at the grain stage. The terrestrial planets grow by slower accretion, and the material may have started to be cleared from the disk. by star infall or radiation pressure flow outwards, before they are finished.

An interesting problem for terrestrial planets is the “meter size problem” (IIRC the name). It was considered hard to grow grains above a cm, and when they grow they rapidly brake and fall onto the star.

Now scientists have come up with grain collapse scenarios, where grains start to follow each other for reasons of gravity and viscous properties of the disk, I think. All sorts of bodies up to protoplanets can be grown quickly and, when over the problematic size, will start to clear the disk rather than being braked by it.

“But as we have learned, the inner planets and outer planets have radically different axial tilts.”

Jupiter can be considered a clue, too massive to tilt by outside forces. The general explanation tend to be the accretion process, where the tilt would be randomized. (Venus may be an exception, since some claim it is becoming tidally locked to the Sun – Mercury is instead locked in a 3:2 resonance – and it is in fact now retrograde with a putative near axis lock.) Possible Mercury bit at least Earth and Mars (and Moon) show late great impacts.

A recent paper show that terrestrial planets would suffer impacts on the great impact scale, between 1 to 8 as norm with an average of 3. These would not be able to clear out an Earth mass atmosphere or ocean, so if Earth suffered one such impact after having volatiles delivered by late accretion/early bombardment, the Moon could result.

Comments are closed.

• school Campus Bookshelves
• menu_book Bookshelves
• perm_media Learning Objects
• login Login
• how_to_reg Request Instructor Account
• hub Instructor Commons

Margin Size

• Download Page (PDF)
• Download Full Book (PDF)
• Periodic Table
• Physics Constants
• Scientific Calculator
• Reference & Cite
• Tools expand_more
• Readability

selected template will load here

This action is not available.

8.2: Origin of the Solar System—The Nebular Hypothesis

• Last updated
• Save as PDF
• Page ID 6889

• Chris Johnson, Matthew D. Affolter, Paul Inkenbrandt, & Cam Mosher
• Salt Lake Community College via OpenGeology

\( \newcommand{\vecs}[1]{\overset { \scriptstyle \rightharpoonup} {\mathbf{#1}} } \)

\( \newcommand{\vecd}[1]{\overset{-\!-\!\rightharpoonup}{\vphantom{a}\smash {#1}}} \)

\( \newcommand{\id}{\mathrm{id}}\) \( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\)

( \newcommand{\kernel}{\mathrm{null}\,}\) \( \newcommand{\range}{\mathrm{range}\,}\)

\( \newcommand{\RealPart}{\mathrm{Re}}\) \( \newcommand{\ImaginaryPart}{\mathrm{Im}}\)

\( \newcommand{\Argument}{\mathrm{Arg}}\) \( \newcommand{\norm}[1]{\| #1 \|}\)

\( \newcommand{\inner}[2]{\langle #1, #2 \rangle}\)

\( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\)

\( \newcommand{\id}{\mathrm{id}}\)

\( \newcommand{\kernel}{\mathrm{null}\,}\)

\( \newcommand{\range}{\mathrm{range}\,}\)

\( \newcommand{\RealPart}{\mathrm{Re}}\)

\( \newcommand{\ImaginaryPart}{\mathrm{Im}}\)

\( \newcommand{\Argument}{\mathrm{Arg}}\)

\( \newcommand{\norm}[1]{\| #1 \|}\)

\( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\) \( \newcommand{\AA}{\unicode[.8,0]{x212B}}\)

\( \newcommand{\vectorA}[1]{\vec{#1}}      % arrow\)

\( \newcommand{\vectorAt}[1]{\vec{\text{#1}}}      % arrow\)

\( \newcommand{\vectorB}[1]{\overset { \scriptstyle \rightharpoonup} {\mathbf{#1}} } \)

\( \newcommand{\vectorC}[1]{\textbf{#1}} \)

\( \newcommand{\vectorD}[1]{\overrightarrow{#1}} \)

\( \newcommand{\vectorDt}[1]{\overrightarrow{\text{#1}}} \)

\( \newcommand{\vectE}[1]{\overset{-\!-\!\rightharpoonup}{\vphantom{a}\smash{\mathbf {#1}}}} \)

Our solar system formed at the same time as our Sun as described in the nebular hypothesis. The nebular hypothesis is the idea that a spinning cloud of dust made of mostly light elements, called a nebula, flattened into a protoplanetary disk, and became a solar system consisting of a star with orbiting planets [ 12 ]. The spinning nebula collected the vast majority of material in its center, which is why the sun Accounts for over 99% of the mass in our solar system.

Planet Arrangement and Segregation

As our solar system formed, the nebular cloud of dispersed particles developed distinct temperature zones. Temperatures were very high close to the center, only allowing condensation of metals and silicate minerals with high melting points. Farther from the Sun, the temperatures were lower, allowing the condensation of lighter gaseous molecules such as methane, ammonia, carbon dioxide, and water [ 13 ]. This temperature differentiation resulted in the inner four planets of the solar system becoming rocky, and the outer four planets becoming gas giants.

Both rocky and gaseous planets have a similar growth model. Particles of dust, floating in the disc were attracted to each other by static charges and eventually, gravity. As the clumps of dust became bigger, they interacted with each other—colliding, sticking, and forming proto-planets. The planets continued to grow over the course of many thousands or millions of years, as material from the protoplanetary disc was added. Both rocky and gaseous planets started with a solid core. Rocky planets built more rock on that core, while gas planets added gas and ice. Ice giants formed later and on the furthest edges of the disc, accumulating less gas and more ice. That is why the gas-giant planets Jupiter and Saturn are composed of mostly hydrogen and helium gas, more than 90%. The ice giants Uranus and Neptune are composed of mostly methane ices and only about 20% hydrogen and helium gases.

The planetary composition of the gas giants is clearly different from the rocky planets. Their size is also dramatically different for two reasons: First, the original planetary nebula contained more gases and ices than metals and rocks. There was abundant hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and less silicon and iron, giving the outer planets more building material. Second, the stronger gravitational pull of these giant planets allowed them to collect large quantities of hydrogen and helium, which could not be collected by the weaker gravity of the smaller planets.

Jupiter’s massive gravity further shaped the solar system and growth of the inner rocky planets. As the nebula started to coalesce into planets, Jupiter’s gravity accelerated the movement of nearby materials, generating destructive collisions rather than constructively gluing material together [ 14 ]. These collisions created the asteroid belt, an unfinished planet, located between Mars and Jupiter. This asteroid belt is the source of most meteorites that currently impact the Earth. Study of asteroids and meteorites help geologist to determine the age of Earth and the composition of its core, mantle, and crust. Jupiter’s gravity may also explain Mars’ smaller mass, with the larger planet consuming material as it migrated from the inner to the outer edge of the solar system [ 15 ].

Pluto and Planet Definition

The outermost part of the solar system is known as the Kuiper belt, which is a scattering of rocky and icy bodies. Beyond that is the Oort cloud, a zone filled with small and dispersed ice traces. These two locations are where most comets form and continue to orbit, and objects found here have relatively irregular orbits compared to the rest of the solar system. Pluto, formerly the ninth planet, is located in this region of space. The XXVIth General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) stripped Pluto of planetary status in 2006 because scientists discovered an object more massive than Pluto, which they named Eris. The IAU decided against including Eris as a planet, and therefore, excluded Pluto as well. The IAU narrowed the definition of a planet to three criteria:

• Enough mass to have gravitational forces that force it to be rounded
• Not massive enough to create a fusion
• Large enough to be in a cleared orbit, free of other planetesimals that should have been incorporated at the time the planet formed. Pluto passed the first two parts of the definition, but not the third. Pluto and Eris are currently classified as dwarf planets

12. Montmerle T, Augereau J-C, Chaussidon M, et al (2006) Solar System Formation and Early Evolution: the First 100 Million Years. In: From Suns to Life: A Chronological Approach to the History of Life on Earth. Springer New York, pp 39–95

13. Martin RG, Livio M (2012) On the evolution of the snow line in protoplanetary discs. Mon Not R Aston Soc Lett 425:L6–L9

14. Petit J-M, Morbidelli A, Chambers J (2001) The Primordial Excitation and Clearing of the Asteroid Belt. Icarus 153:338–347. https://doi.org/10.1006/icar.2001.6702

15. Walsh KJ, Morbidelli A, Raymond SN, et al (2011) A low mass for Mars from Jupiter’s early gas-driven migration. Nature 475:206–209

Observed features any origin model of the solar system/planets must explain

Atoms in your body, collapsing clouds of gas and dust in nebular hypothesis, the spinning nebula flattens, condensation of protosun and protoplanets, the composition of the sun, the two classes of planets, etc. explained by the nebula hypothesis:, evidence for the nebular hypothesis.

Historical Geology

A free online textbook for Historical Geology courses

Nebular theory and the formation of the solar system

In the beginning….

How and when does the story of Earth begin? A logical place to start is with the formation of the planet, but as you’ll soon see, the formation of the planet is part of a larger story, and that story implies some backstory before the story, too. The purpose of this case study is to present our best scientific understanding of the formation of our solar system from a presolar nebula, and to put that nebula in context too.

Nebular theory

The prevailing scientific explanation for the origin of the Earth does a good job of not only explaining the Earth’s formation, but the Sun and all the other planets too. Really, it’s not “the Earth’s origin story” alone so much as it is the origin story of the whole solar system . Not only that, but our Sun is but one star among a hundred million in our galaxy, and our galaxy is one of perhaps a hundred million in the universe. So the lessons we learn by studying our own solar system can likely be applied more generally to the formation of other solar systems elsewhere, including those long ago, in galaxies far, far away. The vice versa is also true: Our understanding of our own solar system’s origin story is being refined as we learn more about exoplanets, some of which defy what we see in our own system; “ hot Jupiters ” and “ super-Earths ,” for instance, are features we see in other star systems but not our own.

When we use powerful telescopes to stare out into the galaxy, we observe plenty of other stars, but we observe other things too, including fuzzy looking features called nebulae. A nebula is a big cloud of gas and dust in space. It’s not as bright as a star because it’s not undergoing thermonuclear fusion, with the tremendous release of energy that accompanies that process. An example of a nebula that you are likely to be able to see is in the constellation Orion. Orion’s “belt,” three stars in a row, is a readily identifiable feature in the northern hemisphere’s night sky in winter. A smaller trio of light spots “dangle” from the belt; this is Orion’s sword scabbard. A cheap pair of binoculars will let you examine these objects for yourself; you will discover that the middle point of light in this smaller trio is not a star. It is a nebula called Messier 42.

Nebulae like Messier 42 are common features of the galaxy, but not as common as stars. Nebulae appear to be short-lived features, as matter is often attracted to other matter. All that stuff distributed in that tremendous volume of space is not as stable as it would be if it were all to be drawn together into a few big clumps. Particles pull together with their neighboring particles under the influence of various forces, including “static cling” or electrostatic attraction. This is the same force that makes tiny dust motes clump up into dust bunnies under your couch!

Now, electrostatic force is quite strong for pulling together small particles over small distances, but if you want to make big things like planets and stars out from a nebula, you’re going to need gravity to take over at some point. Gravity is a rather weak force. After all: every time you take a step, you’ve overcoming the gravitational pull of the entire Earth. But gravity can work very efficiently over distance, if the masses involved are large enough. So static cling was the initial organizer, until the “space dust bunnies” got large enough, then gravity was able to take over, attracting mass to mass. The net result is that the gajillions of tiny pieces of the nebula were drawn together, swirling into a denser and denser amalgamation. The nebula began to spin, flattening out from top to bottom, and flattening out into a spinning disk, something between a Frisbee and a fried egg in shape:

Once a star forms in the center, astronomers call the ring of debris around it a protoplanetary disk. Two important processes that helped organize the protoplanetary disk further were condensation and accretion.

Condensation is the process where gaseous matter sticks together to make liquid or solid matter. We have evidence of condensation in the form of small spherical objects with internal layering, kind of like “space hailstones.” These are chondrules, and they represent the earliest objects formed in our solar system. (Occasionally, we are lucky enough to find chondrules that have survived until the present day, entombed inside certain meteorites of the variety called chondrites.)

Chondrules glommed onto other chondrules, and stuck themselves together into primordial “rocks,” building up larger and larger objects. Eventually, these objects got to be big enough to pull their mass into an round shape, and we would be justified to dub them “planetesimals.” Planetesimals gobbled up nearby asteroids, and smashed into other planetesimals, merging and growing through time through the process of accretion. The kinetic force of these collisions heated the rocky and metallic material of the planetesimals, and their temperature also went up as radioactive decay heated them from within. Once warm, denser material could sink to their middles, and lighter-weight elements and compounds rose up to their surface. So not only were they maturing into spheroidal shapes, but they were also differentiating internally, separating into layers organized by density.

Meteorites that show metallic compositions represent “core” material from these planetesimals; core material that we would never get to glimpse had not their surrounding rocky material been blasted off. Iron meteorites such as the Canyon Diablo meteorite below (responsible for Arizona’s celebrated Meteor Crater) therefore are evidence of differentiation of planetesimals into layered bodies, followed by disaggregation: a polite way of saying they were later violently ripped apart by energetic collisions.

If you were to somehow weigh the nebula before condensation and accretion, and again 4.6 billion years later, we’d find the mass to be the same. Rather than being dispersed in a diffuse cloud of uncountable atoms, the condensation and accretion of the nebula resulted in exactly the same amount of stuff, but organized into a smaller and smaller number of bigger and bigger objects. The biggest of these was the Sun, comprising about 99.86% of all the mass in the solar system. Four-fifths of the remaining 0.14% makes up the planet Jupiter.  Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus are huge gas giants as well. The inner rocky planets (including Earth) make up a tiny, tiny fraction of the total mass of the whole solar system – but of course, just because they are relatively small, that doesn’t mean they are unimportant!

The process of accretion continues into the present day, though at a slower pace than the earliest days of the solar system. One place you can observe this is in the asteroid belt, where there are certain asteroids that are basically nothing more than a big 3D pile of space rocks, held together under their own gravity. Consider the asteroid called Itokawa 25143, for instance:

Only about half a kilometer long, and only a few hundred meters wide, Itokawa doesn’t even have enough gravity to pull itself into a sphere. If you were to land on the surface of Itokawa and kick a soccer-ball-sized boulder, it would readily fly off into space, as the force of your kick would be much higher than the force of gravity causing it to stay put.

Another example of accretion continuing to this day is meteorite impacts. Every time a chunk of rock in space intersects the Earth, its mass is added to that of the planet. In that instant, the solar system gets a little bit cleaner (fewer leftover bits rattling around) and the planet gets a little more massive. A spectacular example of this occurred in 1994 with Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, a  comet which had only been discovered the previous year. Jupiter’s immense gravity broke the comet into chunks, and then swallowed them up one after another. Astronomers on Earth watched with fascination as the comet chunks, some more than a kilometer across, slammed into Jupiter’s atmosphere at 60 km/second (~134,000 mph), creating a 23,700°C fireball and enormous impact scars that were as large as the entire Earth. These scars lasted for months.

This incredibly dramatic event perhaps raises the hair on our necks, seeing the violence and power of cosmic collisions. It’s a reminder that Earthlings are not safe from accretionary impacts even today – as the dinosaurs found out. For the purposes of our current discussion, though, bear in mind that the collision was really a merger between the masses of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 and the planet Jupiter, and after the dust settled, the solar system had one fewer object left off by itself, and Jupiter gained a bit more mass. This is the overall trend of the accretion of our solar system from the presolar nebula: under gravity’s influence, the available mass becomes more and more concentrated through time.

Did I get it?

Your answer:

Correct answer:

Your Answers

A star is born

Because the Sun is so massive, it is able to achieve tremendous pressures in its interior. These pressures are so high, they can actually force two atoms into the same space , overcoming their immense repulsion for one another, and causing their two nuclei to merge. As two atoms combine to make one more massive atom, energy is released. This process is thermonuclear fusion. Once it begins, stars begin to give off light.

The ability of stars to make big atoms from small ones is key to understanding the history of our solar system and our planet. Planet Earth is made of a wide variety of chemical elements, both lightweight and heavy. All of these elements must have been present in the nebula, in order for them to be included in Earth’s “starting mixture.” Elements formed in the Sun today stay in the Sun, fusing low-weight atoms into heavier atoms. So all the elements on Earth today came from a pre-Sun star. We can go outside on a spring day and enjoy the Sun’s warmth, but the carbon that makes up the skin that basks in that warmth was forged in the heart of another star, a star that’s gone now, a star that blew up.

This exploding star was the source of the nebula where we began this case study: it’s the backstory that occurred before the opening scene. Our solar system is like a “haunted house,” where billions of years ago, there was a vibrant, healthy main-sequence star right here, in this part of the galaxy. Perhaps it had planets orbiting it. Perhaps some of those planets harbored life. We’ll never know: the explosion wiped the slate clean, and “reset” the solar system for the iteration in which we live. The ghostly remnants of this time before our own still linger, in the very stuff we’re made from. This long-dead star fused hydrogen to build the carbon in our bodies, the iron in our blood, the oxygen we breathe, and the silicon in the rocks of our planet.

This is an incredible realization to embrace: everything you know, everything you trust, everything you are , is stardust.

Age of the solar system

So just when did all this happen? An estimate for the age of the solar system can be made using isotopes of the element lead (Pb). There are several isotopes of lead, but for the purposes of figuring out the age of the solar system, consider these four: 208 Pb, 207 Pb, 206 Pb, and 204 Pb.

208 Pb, 207 Pb, 206 Pb are all radiogenic: that is to say, they stable “daughter” isotopes that are produced from the radioactive “parent” isotopes. Each is produced from a different parent, at a different rate:

204 Pb is, as far as we know, non-radiogenic. It’s relevant to this discussion because it can serve as a ‘standard’ that can allow us to compare the other lead isotopes to one another. Just as if we wanted to compare the currencies of Namibia, Indonesia, and Chile, we might reference all three to the U.S. dollar. The dollar would serve as a standard of comparison, allowing us to better see the value of the Namibian currency relative to the Indonesian currency and the Chilean currency. That’s what 204 Pb is doing for us here.

This is a plot showing the modeled evolution of our three radiogenic lead isotopes relative to 204 Pb. It is constrained by terrestrial lead samples at the young end, and projected back in time in accordance with our measurements of how quickly these three isotopes of lead are produced by their radioactive parents. Of course, if we go back far enough in time, we run out of samples to evaluate. The Earth’s rock cycle has destroyed all its earliest rocks. They’ve been metamorphosed, or weathered, or melted – perhaps many times over! What would be really nice is to find some rocks from the early end of these curves – some samples that could verify these projections back in time are accurate.

Such samples do exist! But they are not from the Earth so much as “from the Earth’s starting materials.” If the nebular theory is correct, then a few leftover scraps of the planet’s starting materials are found in the solar system’s asteroids. Every now and again, bits of these space rocks fall to earth, and if they survive their passage through the atmosphere, we may be lucky enough to collect them, and analyze them. We call these space rocks “meteors” as they streak through the atmosphere, heating through friction and oxidizing as they fall. Those that make it all the way to Earth’s surface are known as “meteorites.” They can be often be distinguished by their scalloped fusion crust, as with this sample:

Meteorites come in several varieties, including rocky and metallic versions. It is very satisfying that when measurements of these meteorites’ lead isotopes are added to the plot above, they all fall exactly where our understanding of lead isotope production would have them: at the start of each of these model evolution curves. Each lead isotope system tells the same answer for the age of the Earth, acting like three independent witnesses corroborating one another’s testimony. And the answer they all give is 4.6 billion years ago (4.6 Ga). That’s what 208 Pb says. That’s what 207 Pb says. And that’s what 206 Pb says. They all agree, and they agree with the predicted curves based on terrestrial (Earth rock) measurements. This agreement gives us great confidence in this number. The Earth, and meteorites (former asteroids), and the solar system of which they are all a part, began about 4.6 billion years ago…

…But what came before that?

The implications of meteorites

In 1969, a meteorite fell through Earth’s atmosphere and broke up over Mexico. A great many pieces of this meteorite were recovered and made available for scientific analysis. It turned out to be a carbonaceous chondrite, the largest of its kind ever documented. It was named the Allende ( “eye-YEN-day” ) meteorite, for the tiny Chihuahuan village closest to the center of the area over which its fragments were scattered.

One of the materials making up Allende’s chondrules was the calcium feldspar called anorthite. Anorthite is an extraordinarily common mineral in Earth’s crust, but the Allende anorthite was different. For some reason, it has a large amount of magnesium in it. When geochemists determined what kind of magnesium this was, they were surprised to find that it was mostly 26 Mg, an uncommon isotope. The abundances of 25 Mg and 24 Mg were found to be about the same level as Earth rocks, but 26 Mg was elevated by about 1.3%.  And after all, magnesium doesn’t even “belong” in a feldspar. The chemical formula of anorthite is CaAl 2 Si 2 O 8 – there’s no “Mg” spot in there. Why was this odd 26 Mg in this chondritic anorthite?

One way to make 26 Mg is the break-down of radioactive 26 Al. The problem with this idea is that there is no 26 Al around today . It’s an example of an extinct isotope: an atom of aluminum so unstable that it falls apart extremely rapidly. The half-life is only 717,000 years. But because these chondrules condensed in the earliest days of the solar system, there may well have been plenty of 26 Al around at that point for them to incorporate. And Al, of course, is a key part of anorthite’s Ca Al 2 Si 2 O 8 crystal structure.

So the idea is that weird extra 26 Mg in the chondrule’s anorthite could be explained by suggesting it wasn’t always 26 Mg: Instead, it started off as 26 Al ,and it belonged in that crystal’s structure. However, over a short amount of time, it all fell apart, and that left the 26 Mg behind to mark where it had once been. If this interpretation is true, it has shocking implications for the story of our solar system.

To understand why, we first need to ask, what came before the nebula? What was the ‘pre-nebula’ situation? Where did the nebula come from, anyhow?

It turns out that nebulae are generated when old stars of a certain size explode.

These explosions are called supernovae (the plural of supernova). The “nova” part of the name comes from the fact that they are very bright in the night sky – an indication of how energetic the explosion is. They look like “new” stars to the casual observer. Supernovae occur when a star has exhausted its supply of lightweight fuel, and it runs out of small atoms that can be fused together under normal conditions. The outward-directed force ceases, and gravitationally-driven inward-directed forces suddenly dominate, collapsing the star in upon itself. This jacks up the pressures to unbelievably high levels, and is responsible for the nuclear fusion of big atoms – every atom heavier than iron is made instantaneously in the fires of the supernova.

That suite of freshly-minted atoms included a bunch of unstable isotopes, including 26 Al.

And here’s the kicker: If the 26 Al was made in a supernova, started decaying immediately, and yet enough was around that a significant portion of it could be woven into the Allende chondrules’ anorthite, that implies a very short amount of time between the obliteration of our Sun’s predecessor, and the first moments of our own. Specifically, the 717,000 year half-life of 26 Al suggests that this “transition between solar systems” played out in less than 5 million years, conceivably in only 2 million years.

That is very, very quickly.

In summary, the planet Earth is part of a solar system centered on the Sun. This solar system, with its star, its classical planets, its dwarf planets, and its “leftover” comets and asteroids, formed from a nebula full of elements in the form of gas and dust. Over time, these many very small pieces stuck together to make bigger concentrations of mass, eventually culminating in a star and a bunch of planets that orbit it. Asteroids (and asteroids that fall to Earth, called meteorites), are leftovers from this process. The starting nebula itself formed from the destruction of a previous star that had exploded in a supernova. The transition from the pre-Sun star to our solar system took place shockingly rapidly.

Further reading

Marcia Bjornerud’s book Reading the Rocks . Basic Books, 2005: 226 pages.

Jennifer A. Johnson (2019), “ Populating the periodic table: Nucleosynthesis of the elements ,” Science. 01 Feb 2019 : 474-478.

Lee, T., D. A. Papanastassiou, and G. J. Wasserburg (1976), Demonstration of 26 Mg excess in Allende and evidence for 26 Al , Geophysical Research Letters , 3(1), 41-44.

______________

PDF of this page

Chapter Contents

• 1 In the beginning…
• 2 Nebular theory
• 3 A star is born
• 4 Age of the solar system
• 5 The implications of meteorites
• 7 Further reading

On the nature of catastrophic forms

• Original Article
• Published: 28 March 2017
• Volume 12 , pages 343–366, ( 2017 )

Cite this article

• Adriana Petryna   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8952-7559 1 &
• Paul Wolff Mitchell 1  

330 Accesses

14 Citations

1 Altmetric

Explore all metrics

The impact of humans on the Earth’s ecosystem has led to the declaration of a new geological era, the Anthropocene. Earth systems stable for millennia are now threatened by anthropogenic climate change, but this pending instability is not well understood. Researchers from varied disciplines have assembled conceptual toolkits of “abrupt change” science to theorize and model nonlinear shifts. We offer a genealogy of these toolkits, tracing them back to the early and mid-twentieth century problematic of morphogenesis, or the development and evolution of organic form. Mathematician René Thom, inspired by iconoclastic biologists D’Arcy Thompson's and Conrad Hal Waddington’s studies of growth and form, formalized his so-called catastrophe theory in the 1970s. This theory not only purported to explain abrupt change in complex systems, but also presented a novel heuristic of a “nature” of catastrophic form. Thom’s catastrophe theory was applied as a method of thought in the physical, social, and life sciences, but waned after criticism. However, as elements of this theory recycle into today’s abrupt change science, the nature of catastrophic form assumes importance in a scientific imaginary’s response to ecosystemic behaviors that are not subject to, or do not even correspond to, conventional expectations about the future.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price includes VAT (Russian Federation)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Rent this article via DeepDyve

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

“A Single and Indivisible Principle of Unity”: On Growth and Form in Context

Regime shifts occur disproportionately faster in larger ecosystems

Effects of Extreme Disturbance Events: From Ecesis to Social–Ecological–Technological Systems

Current ‘loads,’ or domains requiring urgent attention, include climate-carbon cycle feedbacks, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, chemical emissions, land use, nitrogen and phosphorus inputs to the biosphere and oceans, and atmospheric aerosol loading, among others. Three thresholds (linked to the climate- carbon cycle, biodiversity loss, and nitrogen inputs) have already been crossed; see Rockström et al (2009). On the issue of tipping points and their experimental bases, see Petryna ( 2015 ).

Zeeman ( 1976 , p. 65), Gilmore ( 1992 ), Scheffer et al ( 2009 ), Scheffer ( 2009 ) and Dakos et al ( 2008 ).

Barnosky ( 2013 ).

Britannica Guide to Climate Change ( 2008 ).

Mismatched timing and other idiosyncrasies of species survival make for peculiar scenarios such as these for which the demarcation of critical survival thresholds becomes paramount; see Petryna ( 2013 , 2017 ).

Interview, Simon Levin, July 2014 with A. Petryna.

On the challenges of envisaging futures and the “historicist paradox that inhabits contemporary moods of anxiety and concern about the finitude of humanity,” see Chakrabarty’s ( 2009 ) essay, “The Climate of History: Four Theses”.

Latour ( 2013 ); on “Anthropocene,” see Crutzen ( 2002 ).

Vucetich et al ( 2015 , p. 73).

Gifford ( 2011 ) and Marshall ( 2015 ).

Along these lines, the ethics and safety of geoengineering is being sharply debated. See Barrett  et al  ( 2014 ).

Grosz ( 2004 ).

We define the ontological status of these domains of abrupt change as virtual, following Deleuze ( 1994 , pp. 208–214): “Exactly what Proust said of states of resonance must be said of the virtual: ‘Real without being actual, ideal without being abstract’; and symbolic without being fictional. Indeed, the virtual must be defined as strictly a part of the real object – as though the object had one part of itself in the virtual into which it plunged as though into an objective dimension…. The reality of the virtual consists of the differential elements and relations along with the singular points which correspond to them. The reality of the virtual is structure” ( ibid .: pp. 208–209).

Thom ( 1979 , p. 14); see Baedke ( 2013 , p. 761).

Coleman ( 1964 ).

Lovejoy ( 1976 ).

Steno proved that the glossopetrae did not come from rocks, but must really derive from living animals. With publication of his 1669 treatise, De solido intra solidum naturaliter contento dissertationis prodromus  (Preliminary discourse to a dissertation on a solid body naturally contained within a solid), he founded sedimentary geology to account for how the remains of animals got into rocks. That fossils should be matched to living creatures, as Steno had done, became the modus operandi in nascent paleontology, but if fossils could not be identified with some known creature, then it was reasoned that they must belong to some living but undiscovered species. Only with Cuvier and the amassing of vast zoological collections in Europe did extinction come to the fore as an explanation for the strangeness of the forms found in the fossil record. See Rudwick ( 1976 ) and Coleman ( 1964 ).

Rudwick ( 1976 ).

Daston and Park ( 1998 ).

Mayr ( 1982 ).

Napier ( 2014 , p. 2).

On “morphospace,” see Mitteroecker and Huttegger ( 2009 ).

Thompson ( 1942 , p. 1094).

This charge is arguably the inspiration for Thompson’s On Growth and Form , the first edition of which was published in 1917, the second in 1942.

Boden ( 2008 , p. 1255).

Thompson ( 1942 , p. 270).

Thompson ( 1942 , p. 960).

See Kemp ( 1996 ) and Thompson ( 1942 , p. 395).

Thompson ( 1942 , p. 936).

Thompson ( 1942 , pp. 976–977).

Thompson ( 1942 , p. 526). Darwin: “Thus, as I believe, the most wonderful of all known instincts, that of the hive-bee, can be explained by natural selection having taken advantage of numerous, successive, slight modifications of simpler instincts; natural selection having by slow degrees, more and more perfectly, led the bees to sweep equal spheres at a given distance from each other in a double layer, and to build up and excavate the wax along the planes of intersection. The bees, of course, no more knowing that they swept their spheres at one particular distance from each other, than they know what are the several angles of the hexagonal prisms and of the basal rhombic plates. The motive power of the process of natural selection having been economy of wax; that individual swarm which wasted least honey in the secretion of wax, having succeeded best, and having transmitted by inheritance its newly acquired economical instinct to new swarms, which in their turn will have had the best chance of succeeding in the struggle for existence” ( 1859 , p. 235).

Darwin ( 1875 , p. 10) and Thompson ( 1942 , p. 890).

Hutchinson in Gould ( 1971 , p. 246).

Arthur ( 2006 ).

Thompson ( 1942 , p. 1037).

On differences between the phenomenotechnique and technophenomenon in the context of climate change science, see Petryna ( 2015 ). On the notion of the phenomenotechnique as “part thing and part theorem,” see Rheinberger ( 2010 ).

On Cuvier, see Coleman ( 1964 ); Thompson ( 1942 , p. 1094).

Gould ( 2002 , p. 1203).

Thompson ( 1942 , pp. 1094–1095).

Rudwick ( 1964 , p. 39).

Waddington ( 1942 ) and Hall ( 1992 ).

Amundson ( 2000 ), Gilbert ( 2000 ), and Waddington ( 1971 ).

Joseph Needham quoted in Haraway ( 2004 , p. 45). See Gilbert ( 1991 ).

Waddington ( 1972 , p. 109).

Keller ( 2003 ). See Jacob and Monod ( 1961 ) for an influential example of the paradigm against which Waddington positioned his work.

Favareau ( 2010 , p. 370).

Waddington ( 1942 ). See Van Speybroeck ( 2002 ), Slack ( 2002 ), Jablonka and Lamb ( 2002 ), and Ferrell Jr. ( 2012 ) on Waddington's legacy and epigenetics.

Waddington ( 1940 , p. 11).

Grosz ( 2004 , p. 28).

Waddington ( 1956 , p. 351), Haraway ( 1976 ) and Waddington ( 1977 ).

Waddington ( 1974 , p. 35).

His rebuke of dogmatic Neo-Darwinist “attachments of fitness coefficients to genotypes” came with vivid quips: “If a horse is escaping from a tiger by running away, neither the tiger—nor anyone else—is interested in its genotype” (Waddington, 1974 , p. 33).

Landecker and Panofsky ( 2013 ) and Baedke ( 2013 ).

The philosophical assumptions and implications of Thom’s work are explored in Boutout ( 1993 ); a detailed social history of Thom’s ideas is presented in Aubin ( 1998 , 2004 ).

Thom ( 1975 , p. 159). He continues, “the biologist cannot merely wait until the physicist and chemist can give “a complete theory of all local phenomena found in living matter” ( ibid .).

Thom ( 1975 , p. 282).

Thom ( 1975 , p. 155).

Thom ( 1975 , p. 8).

Thom in Aubin ( 2004 , p. 98). For Thom, this method involves the activity of finding quantitative regularities among atomized constituents, formalizing those regularities into laws, and hypothetico-deductively proceeding theoretically. Thom’s frustrations with this method are best expressed in his own words: “The enormous successes of nineteenth century physics, based on the use and exploitation of physical laws, created the belief that all phenomena could be justified in a similar way, that life and thought themselves might be expressed in equations. But, on reflection, very few phenomena depend on mathematically simply expressed (‘fundamental’) laws: scarcely three, namely, gravitation (Newton’s law), light, and electricity (Maxwell’s law).… Since Newton’s proud cry, ‘Hypothesis non fingo,’ it has been hoped that a happy intuition, a lucky guess, would be sufficient to reveal the fundamental laws underlying everything; but this method of blind groping without any intuitive support seems now to have produced as much as it is able” (Thom 1975 , p. 322).

Thom ( 1975 , pp. 5–6).

Abbott ( 1884 ).

Thom ( 1982 , p. 579).

Berry and Upstill ( 1980 ).

Aubin ( 2004 , p. 138).

Aubin ( 1998 , p. 138).

According to Thom, “A space is a rather complex thing that is difficult to perceive globally. It was however possible to project it on the real line in order to study its structure. In this flattening operation, the space resists: it reacts by creating singularities for the function. The singularities of the function are in some sense vestiges of the topology that was killed….its screams.” (Thom, 1982 , p. 579).

Guckenheimer ( 1973 ).

Thom ( 1973 ) and Aubin ( 2004 , ft. 68).

These seven elementary catastrophes provide models for apparent abrupt, nonlinear shifts due to continuous change in the internal parameters of systems controlled by four or fewer parameters and tending toward local stabilities. He could not go beyond four internal parameters, and empirically these should be known and amenable to perturbation or experiment (Thom, 1975 ; Zeeman, 1976 ). If the internal parameters controlling the system are more than four, then it is mathematically impossible to fully classify the set of (infinite) “generalized catastrophes” which describe the system’s discontinuous behavior (Thom, 1975 , pp. 55–72; Zeeman, 1976 , p. 65).

Aubin ( 2004 , p. 113). See Waddington ( 1968 ) and Thom ( 1968a , b ).

Waddington in Thom ( 1975 , pp. xvi–xvii).

Waddington in Thom ( 1975 , p. xxi).

Thom ( 1975 , p. xxiii).

Liberality in defining systems as tending toward stabilities, and in identifying stable states and the relevant controlling parameters, allowed for Zeeman’s application of catastrophe theory in modeling a wide range of phenomena in which sudden nonlinear shifts occur. See Thom ( 1976 ) for his relatively moderate statement on the application of his theory, a counterpoint to Zeeman ( 1976 ).

On classrooms, see Preece ( 1977 ); on culture systems, see Renfrew ( 1978 ); on hominids, see Weaver ( 1980 ).

Jones and Walters ( 1976 ); Van Nguyen and Wood ( 1979 ); Rambal ( 1984 ); Recknagel ( 1985 ).

Sussman ( 1976 ).

Thom ( 1979 ).

Thom ( 2010 ), p. 138.

Thom ( 2010 ), p. xiii.

Thom asserts the importance of “interpreting geometrically” as an antidote to a “dogmatically quantitative” scientific approach “governed by mathematical process that was coherent but totally abstract” (Thom, 1975 , pp. 5–6). For the elaboration of Thom's epistemological project beyond ‘catastrophe theory' sensu stricto , see Thom ( 1989 , 1990 ).

See Thom ( 1975 , p. 6).

Thom ( 1975 , p. 159) and Thom ( 1975 , p. 8).

Thom ( 1975 , p. 6). Any dynamical system is potentially soluble by topological analysis, because any system is stable or unstable in certain situations, and many systems are nonlinear and qualitative in their change, containing thresholds and bifurcations.

Boutout ( 1993 , p. 192).

Deleuze ( 2003 , p. 71).

Deleuze ( 1994 , p. 220). More connections between Deleuze’s and Thom’s topological thinking are established in DeLanda ( 2002 ), especially pp. 9–81.

Thom ( 1975 , p. 155); on macro-reductionism, see DeLanda ( 2006 , pp. 4–5).

Thayer and Non ( 2015 , p. 724).

Lock ( 2013 ). As the epigenome explains less than half of exposure-related human harm, its scope is oversold and could be read as part of a further ‘scientization’ of the social world. See Zakariya ( 2016 ).

On epistemic challenges to the existence of the humanities and the “tragedy of the ‘one-dimensional man,’” see Mbembe ( 2012 ).

See Levin ( 2014 ).

DeLanda ( 2010 ).

Petryna ( 2015 ).

Petraitis and Dudgeon ( 2004 ).

Hughes et al ( 2013 ).

See Petryna ( 2013 ). On alternative stable states, see Scheffer et al ( 2009 ) and Scheffer ( 2009 ); on limitations of classical extinction theories, see Cahill et al ( 2013 ).

Abbott, E.A. (1884) Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions . London: Seely and Co.

Google Scholar  

Amundson, R. (2000) Embryology and Evolution 1920-1960: Worlds Apart? History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 22(3): 335–352.

Arthur, W. (2006) D’Arcy Thompson and the Theory of Transformations. Nature Reviews Genetics 7: 401–406.

Article   Google Scholar  

Aubin, D. (1998) A Cultural History of Catastrophes and Chaos: Around the Institut Des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques, France 1958–1980 . PhD Dissertation, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ.

Aubin, D. (2004) Forms of Explanation in the Catastrophe Theory of René Thom: Topology, Morphogenesis, and the Structuralism. In: M.N. Wise (ed.) Growing Explanations: Historical Perspectives on Recent Science . Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 95–130.

Baedke, J. (2013) The Epigenetic Landscape in the Course of Time: Conrad Hal Waddington’s Methodological Impact on the Life Sciences. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44: 756–773.

Barrett, S., Lenton, T.M. and Lenton, A.M., et al . (2014) Climate Engineering Reconsidered. Nature Climate Change 4: 527–529.

Barnosky, A. (2013) Abrupt Impacts of Climate Change. Public Briefing at the National Academy of Sciences. Washington D.C., December 3.

Berry, M.V. and Upstill, C. (1980) IV Catastrophe Optics: Morphologies of Caustics and Their Diffraction Patterns. Progress in Optics 18: 257–346.

Boden, M. (2008) Mind as Machine: A History of Cognitive Science . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Boutout, A. (1993) Catastrophe Theory and Its Critics. Synthese 96: 167–200.

Britannica Guide to Climate Change. (2008) Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., http://eb.pdn.ipublishcentral.com/product/britannica-guide-to-climate-change , accessed 17 October 2016.

Cahill, A.E., Aiello-Lammens, M.F., Fisher-Reid, C., Hua, X., Karanewsky, C.J., Ryu, H.Y., Sbeglia, G.C., Spagnolo, F., Waldron, J.B., Warsi, O. and Wiens, J.J. (2013) How Does Climate Change Cause Extinction? Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 280: 20121890.

Chakrabarty, D. (2009) The Climate of History: Four Theses. Critical Inquiry 35(2): 197–222.

Coleman, W. (1964) Georges Cuvier, Zoologist: A Study in the History of Evolution Theory. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Book   Google Scholar  

Crutzen, P.J. (2002) Geology of Mankind. Nature 415: 23.

Dakos, V., Scheffer, M., van Nes, E.H., Brovkin, V., Petoukhov, V. and Held, H. (2008) Slowing Down as an Early Warning Signal for Abrupt Climate Change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105(38): 14308–14312.

Darwin, C. (1859) On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. London: John Murray.

Darwin, C. (1875) The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants . 2nd edn. London: John Murray.

Daston, L. and Park, K. (1998) Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150 – 1750 . New York: Zone Books.

DeLanda, M. (2002 ) Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy. London: Continuum.

DeLanda, M. (2006) A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity. London: Continuum.

DeLanda, M. (2010) Deleuze: History and Science . New York: Atropos Press.

Deleuze, G. (1994) Difference and Repetition . New York: Columbia University Press.

Deleuze, G. (2003)  Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation (trans. D.W. Smith). London: Continuum.

Favareau, D. (ed.) (2010) Essential Readings in Biosemiotics . Berlin: Springer Science.

Ferrell, J.E. Jr. (2012) Bistability, Bifurcations, and Waddington’s Epigenetic Landscape. Current Biology 22(11): 458–466.

Gifford, R. (2011) The Dragons of Inaction: Psychological Barriers that Limit Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation. American Psychologist 66(4): 290–302.

Gilbert, S. (1991) Epigenetic Landscaping: Waddington’s Use of Cell Fate Bifurcation Diagrams. Biology and Philosophy 6: 135–154.

Gilbert, S. (2000) Diachronic Biology Meets Evo-Devo: C. H. Waddington’s Approach to Evolutionary Developmental Biology. American Zoologist 40: 729–737.

Gilmore, R. (1992) Catastrophe Theory. In: G.L. Trigg (ed.) Encyclopedia of Applied Physics , Vol. 3. New York: VCH, pp. 85–119.

Grosz, E. (2004) The Nick of Time: Politics, Evolution and the Untimely . Durham: Duke University Press.

Gould, S. (1971) D’Arcy Thompson and the Science of Form. New Literary History 2(2): 229–258.

Gould, S. (2002) The Structure of Evolutionary Theory . Cambridge: Belknap Press.

Guckenheimer, J. (1973) Review: René Thom, Stabilité Structurelle et Morphogénèse, Essai d'une Théorie Générale des Modèles . Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 79(5): 878–890.

Hall, B. (1992) Waddington’s Legacy in Development and Evolution. American Zoologist 32(1): 113–122.

Haraway, D. (1976) Crystals, Fabrics, and Fields: Metaphors of Organicism in Twentieth - Century Developmental Biology . London: Yale University Press.

Haraway, D. (ed.) (2004) The Haraway Reader. London: Routledge.

Hughes, T.P., Linares, C., Dakos, V., van de Leemput, I.A. and van Nes, E.H. (2013) Living Dangerously on Borrowed Time During Slow, Unrecognized Regime Shifts. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 28(3): 149–155.

Jablonka, E. and Lamb, M. (2002) The Changing Concept of Epigenetics. Annals of the New York Academy of Science s 981: 82–96.

Jacob, F and Monod, J. (1961) Genetic Regulatory Mechanisms in the Synthesis of Proteins. Journal of Molecular Biology 3: 318–356.

Jones, D.D. and Walters, C. J. (1976) Catastrophe Theory and Fisheries Regulation. Journal of the Fisheries Research Board of Canada 33: 2829–2833.

Keller, E. (2003) Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and Machines. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Kemp, M. (1996) Doing What Comes Naturally: Morphogenesis and the Limits of the Genetic Code. Art Journal 55(1): 27–32.

Landecker, H. and Panofsky, A. (2013) From Social Structure to Gene Regulation, and Back: A Critical Introduction to Environmental Epigenetics for Sociology. Annual Review of Sociology 39: 333–357.

Latour, B. (2013) Facing Gaia: Six Lectures on the Political Theology of Nature, Lecture 6. Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion Edinburgh, 28 February.

Levin, N. (2014) Multivariate Statistics and the Enactment of Metabolic Complexity. Social Studies of Science 44(4): 555–578.

Lock, M. (2013) The Epigenome and Nature/Nurture Reunification: A Challenge for Anthropology. Medical Anthropology 32: 291–308.

Lovejoy, A.O. (1976) The Great Chain of Being: the Study of the History of an Idea . 13th edn. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Marshall, G. (2015) Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains are Wired to Ignore Climate Change . New York: Bloomsbury USA.

Mayr, E. (1982) The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Mbembe, A. (2012) At the Center of the Knot. Social Dynamics 38(1): 8–14.

Mitteroecker, P. and Huttegger, S.M. (2009) The Concept of Morphospaces in Evolutionary and Developmental Biology: Mathematics and Metaphors. Biological Theory 4(1): 54-67.

Napier, D. (2014) The New Sociobiology: Symbiosis and Local Meaning. Paper presented at the “End of Biodeterminism?” Conference at the Centre for Cultural Epidemics, 1 October, Aarhus, Denmark.

Petraitis, P.S. and Dudgeon, S.R. (2004) Do Alternative Stable Community States Exist in the Gulf of Maine Rocky Intertidal Zone? A Comment. Ecology 85: 1160–1165.

Petryna, A. (2013) The Origins of Extinction. Limn 3:50–53.

Petryna, A. (2015) What is a Horizon? Navigating Thresholds in Climate Change Uncertainty. In: P. Rabinow and L. Samimian-Darash (eds) Modes of Uncertainty: Anthropological Cases . Chicago: Chicago University Press, pp. 147–164.

Chapter   Google Scholar  

Petryna, A. (2017) Horizoning Work. In: J. Biehl and P. Locke (eds.) Unfinished: The Anthropology of Becoming . Durham: Duke University Press.

Preece, P. (1977) Problems of Discipline on Teaching Practice: A Model Based on Catastrophe Theory. Research Intelligence 3(2): 22–23.

Rambal, S. (1984) Water Balance and Pattern of Root Water Uptake by a Quercus coccifera L. Evergreen Scrub. Oecologia 62(1): 18–25.

Recknagel, F. (1985) Analysis of Structural Stability of Aquatic Ecosystems as an Aid for Ecosystem Control. Ecological Modelling 27: 221–234.

Renfrew, C. (1978) Trajectory, Discontinuity, and Morphogenesis: The Implications of Catastrophe Theory for Archaeology. American Antiquity 43: 203–222.

Rheinberger H-J. (2010)  An Epistemology of the Concrete: Twentieth-Century Histories of Life . Durham: Duke University Press.

Richards, O. (1955) D’Arcy W. Thompson’s Mathematical Transformation and the Analysis of Growth. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 63(4):456–473.

Rudwick, M.J.S. (1964) The Inference of Function from Structure in Fossils. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 15(57): 27–40.

Rudwick, M.J.S. (1976). The Meaning of Fossils: Episodes in the History of Paleontology. 2nd edn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Scheffer, M., Carpenter, S., Foley, J.A., Folke, C. and Walker, B. (2001) Catastrophic Shifts in Ecosystems. Science 413:591–596.

Scheffer, M., Bascompte, J., Brock, W.A., Brovkin, V., Carpenter, S.R., Dakos, V., Held, H., van Nes, E.H., Rietkerk, M. and Sugihara, G. (2009) Early Warning Signals for Critical Transitions. Nature 461: 53–59.

Scheffer, M. 2009. Critical Transitions in Nature and Society . Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Slack, J.M.W. (2002) Conrad Hal Waddington: The Last Renaissance Biologist? Nature 3(11): 889–895.

Sussman, H.J. (1976) Catastrophe Theory: A Preliminary Critical Study. PSA: Proceedings of the Biennal Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1976(1): 256–286.

Thayer, Z.M. and Non, A.L. (2015) Anthropology Meets Epigenetics: Current and Future Directions. American Anthropologist 117(4): 722–735.

Thom, R. (1968a) Comments on C.H. Waddington: The Basic Ideas of Biology. In: C.H. Paddington (ed.) Towards a Theoretical Biology, Vol. 1. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, pp. 32–41.

Thom, R. (1968b) Une Théorie Dynamique de la Morphogénèse. In: C.H. Waddington (ed.) Towards a Theoretical Biology, Vol. 1. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, pp. 152–179.

Thom, R. (1973) A Global Dynamical Scheme for Vertebrate Embryology. In: J. Cowan (ed.) Lectures on Mathematics in the Life Sciences. Providence: American Mathematical Society, pp. 3–45.

Thom, R. (1975) Structural Stability and Morphogenesis: An Outline of a General Theory of Models. Reading: W. A. Benjamin.

Thom, R. (1976) Structural Stability, Catastrophe Theory, and Applied Mathematics: The John von Neumann Lecture. SIAM Review 19(2): 189–201.

Thom, R. (1979) At the Boundaries of Man’s Power: Play. SubStance 8(4):11–19.

Thom, R. (1982) Exposé Introductive. In: J. Petitot (ed.) Logos et Théories des Catastrophes: À Partir de L’oeuvre de René Thom, Actes du Colloque International de Cerisy - la - Salle, 1982. Geneva: Patiño.

Thom, R. (1989) Causality and Finality in Theoretical Biology: A Possible Picture. Mathematical Modeling 4:39–45.

Thom, R. (1990) Itinerary for a Science of the Detail. Criticism 32(3):371–390.

Thom, R. (2010) To Predict is Not to Explain (trans. R. Lisker), http://www.fermentmagazine.org/Stories/Thom/Predire.pdf , accessed 2 May 2016.

Thompson, D. W. (1917) On Growth and Form . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Thompson, D.W. (1942) On Growth and Form . 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Van Nguyen, V. and Wood, E.F. (1979) On the Morphology of Summer Algae Dynamics in Non-stratified Lakes. Ecological Modelling 6(2): 117–131.

Van Speybroeck, L. (2002) From Epigenesis to Epigenetics: The Case of C. H. Waddington. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 981: 61–81.

Vucetich, J., Nelson, M. and Batavia, C. (2015) The Anthropocene: Disturbing Name, Limited Insight. In: B.A. Minteer and S.J. Pyne (eds.) After Preservation: Saving American Nature in the Age of Humans . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Waddington, C.H. (1940). Organisers and Genes . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Waddington, C.H. (1942) Canalization of Development and the Inheritance of Acquired Characters. Nature 150(3811): 563–565.

Waddington, C.H. (1956). Principles of Embryology . London: George Allen & Unwin.

Waddington, C.H. (1957). The Strategy of the Genes . London: George Allen & Unwin.

Waddington, C.H. (1968) Towards a Theoretical Biology. Nature 218(5141): 525–527.

Waddington, C.H. (1971). Concepts of Development. In: E. Tobach, L.R. Aronson and E. Shaw (eds.) The Biopsychology of Development . San Diego: Academic Press, pp. 17–23.

Waddington, C.H. (1972) Determinism and Life. In: A. Kenny (ed.) The Nature of Mind: The Gifford Lectures 1971/1972. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Waddington, C.H. (1974) A Catastrophe Theory of Evolution. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 231(1):32–42.

Waddington, C.H. (1977) Tools for Thought . London: Jonathan Cape Ltd.

Weaver, D. S. (1980) Catastrophe Theory and Human Evolution . Journal of Anthropological Research 36(4): 403–410.

Zakariya, N. (2016) Scientific Humanisms and Technological Utopias: Situating the Transhumanist Imagination. In: J.B. Hurlbut and H. Tirosh-Samuelson (eds.) Perfecting Human Futures: Technology, Secularization and Eschatology . Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 269–289.

Zeeman, E. C. (1976) Catastrophe Theory. Scientific American 234(4): 65–83.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, 3260 South Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

Adriana Petryna & Paul Wolff Mitchell

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Adriana Petryna .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Petryna, A., Mitchell, P.W. On the nature of catastrophic forms. BioSocieties 12 , 343–366 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41292-017-0038-3

Download citation

Published : 28 March 2017

Issue Date : September 2017

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/s41292-017-0038-3

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• abrupt change
• catastrophe
• Anthropocene
• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research

The Foundation of Modern Geology

Created by: alexander h. taylor.

Catastrophism

Georges Cuvier’s sketch of stratigraphy in the Paris Basin.

A comic depicting the implications of attributing mass extinction events to world wide flooding.

Catastrophism was a theory developed by Georges Cuvier based on paleontological evidence in the Paris Basin. Cuvier was there when he observed something peculiar about the fossil record. Instead of finding a continuous succession of fossils, Cuvier noticed several gaps where all evidence of life would disappear and then abruptly reappear again after a notable amount of time. Cuvier recognized these gaps in the fossil succession as mass extinction events. This led Cuvier to develop a theory called catastrophism. Catastrophism states that natural history has been punctuated by catastrophic events that altered that way life developed and rocks were deposited.

Although Cuvier hypothesized that the flooding of lowland areas could have been the cause of mass extinctions, he never really explained any force that could cause the flooding to occur in the first place. Therefore, an implication of Cuvier’s theory is that the forces acting on the earth must have changed periodically throughout earth’s history. Because Cuvier never identified these forces, many individuals believed these extinctions could have been the result of biblical floods or acts of god.

An avid supporter of catastrophism was Abraham Werner, the leading geologist of the 18 th century. As we have seen before, Werner was the most influential supporter of neptunism, a theory stating that most of the rocks observable at earth’s surface were once precipitated out of a vast ocean. Therefore, Werner used catastrophism as evidence to prove that the earth had experienced mass floods throughout geologic history. However, both catastrophism and neptunism would eventually be discarded during the 19 th century.

Image Links:

http://rainbow.ldeo.columbia.edu/courses/v1001/cuviertab.html

http://biologos.org/blog/science-and-the-bible-scientific-creationism-part-1

• Encyclopedias

nebular hypothesis

The nebular hypothesis is the idea first put forward in general terms by Immanuel Kant in 1775, and then more specifically by LaPlace in 1796, that the Solar System formed through the progressive condensation of a gassy nebula which once encircled the Sun . It was suggested that as this nebula rotated and contracted, rings of gas were cast off at various stages from which the planets subsequently condensed. Accordingly, the outer planets would have formed first, followed by Mars , Earth , Venus , and Mercury .

My YouTube channel

The Science Fiction Experience

Related category

PLANETS AND MOONS

Encyclopedia index

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

• Privacy policy
• David Darling 2016©

share this!

May 15, 2024

This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility:

fact-checked

peer-reviewed publication

Researchers devise a new building design method that avoids catastrophic collapses

by Technical University of Valencia

Current building design methods are primarily based on improving the connectivity between components of the structure. In the event of component failure, this connectivity allows the loads that were carried by failed components to be redistributed to the rest of the structural system.

While these methods are effective after small initial failures, they can increase the risk of progressive collapse after large initial failures, leading to complete or large-scale collapses. This happened, for example, in the case of Champlain Towers, during the collapse of a building in Peñíscola in 2021 and in the Iranian city of Abadan in 2022. These are the type of incidents that are prevented by a proposed approach originating from the ICITECH-UPV (Universitat Politècnica de València).

The work is published in the journal Nature .

"Our novel design method provides a solution to overcome this alarming limitation and achieve more resilient buildings, able to isolate a collapse only to the part of the structure that has suffered the initial failure and safeguarding the rest of the building," says Jose M. Adam, co-author of the publication with Nirvan Makoond, Andri Setiawan and Manuel Buitrago, all four being members of ICITECH-UPV.

"The new design method has been validated with a test on a real-scale building. It is therefore the first solution against collapse propagation in buildings after large initial failures that has been tested and verified at full scale. The application of the new design method will prevent catastrophic collapses, thus protecting human lives and minimizing economic losses ."

Fuse-based segmentation prevents catastrophic building collapses

The principle of the method developed by the UPV team lies in using the concept of a structural fuse, which makes it possible to isolate damaged parts of a building to prevent the propagation of major failures throughout the entire construction.

"This new philosophy is similar to protecting an electrical system against overloads by connecting different grid components through electrical fuses. With our designs, the building has structural continuity under normal operating conditions but is segmented when the failure propagation is inevitable, thus reducing the extent of damages and preventing total collapse," says Makoond.

"The implementation of the method will only have a minor or even negligible impact on the cost of the structure, as it uses conventional construction details and materials," says Setiawan.

In its current state of development, the researchers' new design approach can be practically applied to any new building. "Its effectiveness has been verified and demonstrated for a full-scale building specimen made of prefabricated concrete. We are currently working on extending the methodology to buildings constructed with in-situ concrete and steel," concludes Buitrago.

The development of this new design method is one of the most outstanding results to date of the Endure project. It was precisely within the framework of this project that a world-first test was carried out in June 2023 to validate its performance. The tests were carried out on a complete full-scale building, in which a large initial failure in the structure was isolated in one part of the building, preventing its propagation to the entire structure. It should be noted that 100% of the research was carried out at the UPV, with the four authors of the publication also being UPV researchers.

Explore further

Feedback to editors

Brain-machine interface device predicts internal speech in second patient

13 hours ago

Animal-brain-inspired AI game changer for autonomous robots

15 hours ago

Biohybrid robotic hand may help unravel complex sensation of touch

16 hours ago

'Noise' in the machine: Human differences in judgment lead to problems for AI

Study shows self-assembled monolayers approach can be applied to regular structure perovskite solar cells

17 hours ago

Scientists generate heat over 1,000°C with solar power instead of fossil fuel

Next-generation sustainable electronics are doped with air

Researchers study levitating diesel and biodiesel droplets for more efficient biofuel motors

18 hours ago

All wound up: A clearer look at electric guitar pickups

Artificial tactile system study: Robots' sense of touch could be as fast as humans

Related stories.

Study seeks to revolutionize wind turbine design

Mar 15, 2023

What are the warning signs before a building collapses?

Jul 5, 2021

New building standard paves the way for collapse-resistant structures

Jun 5, 2023

Failure of Francis Scott Key Bridge provides future engineers a chance to learn how to better protect the public

Mar 30, 2024

What caused the collapse of the condominium building in Florida?

Nov 9, 2021

Why did the Miami apartment building collapse? And are others in danger?

Jun 25, 2021

Recommended for you

Digital twin helps optimize manufacturing speed while satisfying quality constraints

May 14, 2024

Researchers compile most comprehensive power outage dataset for the US

New technique to transform waste carbon dioxide into high-value chemicals achieves cost reduction of about 30%

New snail-inspired robot can climb walls

Let us know if there is a problem with our content.

Use this form if you have come across a typo, inaccuracy or would like to send an edit request for the content on this page. For general inquiries, please use our contact form . For general feedback, use the public comments section below (please adhere to guidelines ).

Please select the most appropriate category to facilitate processing of your request

Thank you for taking time to provide your feedback to the editors.

Your feedback is important to us. However, we do not guarantee individual replies due to the high volume of messages.

E-mail the story

Your email address is used only to let the recipient know who sent the email. Neither your address nor the recipient's address will be used for any other purpose. The information you enter will appear in your e-mail message and is not retained by Tech Xplore in any form.

Your Privacy

This site uses cookies to assist with navigation, analyse your use of our services, collect data for ads personalisation and provide content from third parties. By using our site, you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use .

E-mail newsletter