Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Solar System is approximately 4.567 to 4.568 billion years old. Scientists determine this age through radiometric dating of meteorites formed during the early condensation of the solar nebula, with the oldest known solid inclusions dating to 4,568.2 million years ago.
The Solar System formed from the gravitational collapse of a fragment of a giant molecular cloud, most likely triggered by a nearby supernova explosion or the bipolar outflows of young stars. Evidence for a nearby supernova comes from iron-60, a short-lived isotope found in ancient meteorites that can only be produced in exploding stars.
The nebular hypothesis was first developed in the 18th century by Emanuel Swedenborg, Immanuel Kant, and Pierre-Simon Laplace. The hypothesis fell out of favour due to criticism about the Sun's angular momentum, but was revived after early 1980s studies showed young stars surrounded by cool discs of dust and gas exactly as the model predicts.
Earth's water was delivered after the planet formed, because water is too volatile to have condensed in the inner Solar System during planetary formation. The water was probably brought by planetary embryos and small planetesimals thrown out of the asteroid belt by Jupiter's gravity; a population of main-belt comets discovered in 2006 has also been suggested as a possible source.
In about 5-7 billion years, the Sun will expand into a red giant, swallowing Mercury and Venus. It will then shed its outer layers as a planetary nebula, leaving a white dwarf. Eventually, after roughly 1 quadrillion years, the gravity of passing stars will strip all remaining planets from orbit, and the Solar System will cease to exist.
The Late Heavy Bombardment is a hypothesised period of intense asteroid and comet impacts on the inner Solar System that occurred approximately 4 billion years ago, about 500-600 million years after the Solar System formed. Evidence of this bombardment is still visible in the cratering on the Moon and Mercury, and the oldest known signs of life on Earth date to 3.8 billion years ago, shortly after this period ended.