I mean, we know that earth is rotating “eastward” and orbiting “prograde” in relation to the sun. But why those directions? Considering that there is a westward rotation and a retrograde orbiting.
In: Physics
Roll two balls towards each other. When they collide their forces will cancel each other out. The two balls after the collision will move in the direction of whichever had the greatest force.
Now apply that to billions of rocks orbiting a star. At first they orbit in all kinds of directions. But after millions of years of rocks colliding into each other their forces cancel out and those with the greatest force dominate, resulting in everything travelling in the same direction.
Apply that same logic to rocks coming together due to gravity to form a planet.
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