Our solar system is about 4.6 billion years old.

Quick Scoop

  • Scientists estimate the age of the solar system at roughly 4.6 billion years , with detailed measurements giving about 4.567 billion years from the oldest known materials.
  • This age comes mainly from radiometric dating of primitive meteorites, whose tiny inclusions (called CAIs) are the oldest solid bits that formed in the early solar nebula.
  • Because the Sun, planets, moons, and most smaller bodies formed in the same overall collapse of a gas-and-dust cloud, this age applies to nearly all major objects in the solar system as well.

So if you imagine the universe as about 13.8 billion years old, our solar system has been around for roughly the last third of cosmic history.

In forum discussions, you’ll often see people quote “about 4.6 billion years” as the answer to how old is our solar system —that’s a rounded version of the more precise ~4.567 billion-year estimate from meteorite studies.

TL;DR: Our solar system is approximately 4.6 billion years old , based on dating of ancient meteorites and their earliest solid components.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.