History of Solar System formation and evolution hypotheses occur in the interstellar material from which stars are born) formed the Sun and protoplanets, the latter splitting to form planets. The 2 portions can not remain gravitationally bound to each other, are at a mass ratio of at least 8 to 1, and for inner planets they go into independent orbits while for outer planets one of the portions exits the Solar System. The inner protoplanets were Venus-Mercury and Earth-Mars. The moons of the greater planets were formed from "droplets" in the neck connecting the 2 portions of the dividing protoplanet and these droplets could account for some of
Fictional planets of the Solar System fragments of a single planet was gradually abandoned over the course of the middle decades of the 20th century in favor of the conclusion that no planet had ever accreted in the region of the asteroid belt in the first place. In fiction, various other names were given to the same or similar concepts. Fictional planets in our Solar System beyond the orbit of Neptune have been employed many times as settings or references in science fiction. Following the general reception of Pluto as the ninth planet of the Solar System in 1930, a hypothetical additional planet was sometimes called