Question: How are planets made?

Jen Gupta answered on 16 Jun 2011:

Planets are thought to form at the same time that their star forms (see /cobaltj11-zone/2011/06/how-are-stars-made for how stars form). Stars form in clouds of dust and gas. While the star is forming, the cloud around the protostar starts to rotate around the star and will flatten into a disk around the protostar. We call this a protoplanetary disk. As it is spinning around the protostar, bits of gas and dust will start to clump together and this forms the planets.

I’m not an expert on this so if you want to find out more, you could try the Hubble Space Telescope website (http://hubblesite.org/hubble_discoveries/discovering_planets_beyond/how-do-planets-form) or the Harvard website (http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/COMPLETE/learn/star_and_planet_formation.html)