eli5: why are the orbits of celestial bodies elliptical?
In: 1
It’s just more likely.
A circle is an ellipse. It’s just a special one where the “horizontal stretch” is the same length as “the vertical stretch”. But there are an infinite number of ellipsis shapes, and only one possible circle. So it’s just more likely by far that any orbit will be a normal ellipse rather than the very special circle ellipse.
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