Time: Around 1500 Million Years After the Big Bang
Yeah right so life.
Aliens. Probably either extinct or flying around the universe in wormholes now, looking for civilizations to conquer.
Let's hope it's the first, although the latter would be more interesting.
Remember the gravity thingy? Now it's helping little lost stars into bigger systems with lots of stars called galaxies.
And galaxies were also invented by gravity, so yeah.
*clap clap*
Well the universe is becoming bigger, and galaxies are essential so that everything doesn't fall apart and float everywhere.
Why is it becoming bigger?
You know, the day when the universe exploded? There was something called dark energy released. It's even weirder than gravity and basically pulls things apart. Like make the universe bigger somehow. Complex physics. Ignore it.
Dark matter was also released then and now it's helping gravity to keep galaxies together. It's something that has no substance, no smell, no taste, not tangible, and cannot be seen. But it still has a powerful gravity field and keeps the galaxies together. There's probably dark matter floating through you right now, but only in tiny insignificant amounts, so never mind that.
Now, the galaxies. They're made out of about 100 billion stars each, although it may be up to 400 billion. The galaxies in the past were probably smaller, but still made out of billions of stars.
Some galaxies form so close together that they're locked in a gravitational embrace.
Aw, look at them hugging. So sweet ah. They'll become one big galaxy soon :)
Let's move on, so let's see. More galaxies forming and hugging each other then merging with each other and making bigger galaxies.
Now a particular large galaxy formed at around 3900 million years after the big bang. It's called the Milky Way. Quite familiar huh? They call it the Milky Way because it looks like some milk spilled in the sky from Earth. According to Greek Myths, the goddess Hera was feeding baby Hercules. Somehow, her milk went splat and spilled across the galaxy (oof). I don't know, the ancient people must have gone crazy. So the name stuck. And here you are. The Milky Way. Quite fortunate we're big, that means we're eating smaller galaxies and not other galaxies eating us.
(Although Andromeda is coming but never mind)
What's next? Oh, it's the black holes which are formed when large stars die and they collapse under gravity and collapse too much and cause a dent in spacetime and cause a hole in space that even light can't escape.
And so now stars die and make other stars which have funny clouds and rocks around them.
And through that process of birth and death a star formed that would come to be known as the SUN.
Around it, a ring of planets formed. Leftover gas from the explosion of the dead star quickly stuck to the bigger planets beyond the asteroid belt via gravity and they came to be known as the gas giants.
So now there are how many planets? 1 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 (not counting dwarf planets) and WHOOPS this 5th gas giant just got flung out of the solar system through complicated gravity stuff. Goodbye, we miss you.
So now there are 9 including Eart -- OUCH hey watch out Theia you just collided with Earthy boy there! (At least that's what scientists speculate what happened. They don't really know.) Ah well. 8 now. And a cute little moon orbiting the bigger Earth boy.
So there you have it. 8 planets. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Orbiting around one very very very big boy called the sun which takes up 99.9% of the mass of the solar system.
Earth is now a volcanic place. Mars is much better and somewhat like Earth somehow. We'll cover that in the next chapter.
