Rosanne Kutash, age 11, of Skelton, Conn., for her question:

How was, the Solar System formed?

We do not know how or when the Solar System was created so we only can form theories about these things, a theory is a reasonable explanation based on a good deal of evidence which fits the known facts. But it is not proof. A theory about a matter so important as the Solar System is called a hypothesis. The experts offer not one, but several hypotheses about how our sun and its family were created.

Each of these hypotheses tries to account for a number of known facts. The sun and all the planets circle around from west to east. The planets are more or less on a level with the sun's equator. Of the entire mass or weight of the Solar System, all but a small fraction of a percent is in the sun. The sun and the planets are made of the same materials. In the sun, those materials are gaseous and seething hot. In the planets, they are cool and solid..

It seems, then, that the sun is the parent of the planets and other solid. bodies in the System. Each hypothesis so far set forth. suggests that planets and other children of the Solar family were made from material torn from the sun. Each hypothesis suggests that this gaseous material was most likely torn from around the suns s equator and that somehow this gaseous material former a number of solid bodies.

The Nebular Hypothesis was set forth in 1796. It suggested that the sun was originally a huge, hazy balls revolving slowly from west to east. It shrank and revolved faster, leaving wads of gassy material to form the solid bodies of the Solar System.

The Tidal Hypothesis came later. It suggested that a star camp quite close to the sun and that the tidal pull tore huge streamers of the sun's gases out into space.

There are scholarly arguments against both these theories and most experts now reject them because they do not tally with new information we have about the laws of physics,

The newest hypothesis leans towards the first idea that the sun was originally a hazy nebula. It is the Protoplanet Hypothesis and it goes into great detail as to how the planets and other bodies were formed rind set into motion, It suggests how the known laws of physics could form fuzzy balls of gas, or protoplanets, which later became solid planets.

Some day we may have proof about how our Solar family was borne but so far we can offer only suggestions, Maybe our telescopes will show the birth of other solar families in the skies. There is some evidence that planets form when. a star explodes then shrinks again, leaving behind a shell of hazy gas,