If the Earth is orbiting the sun and the sun is moving around the galaxy, and the galaxy itself is moving through space, why is it, with so many different speeds, that the planets’ orbits are so stable?

Question

With so much going on gravity-wise, it blows my mind that even with the solar system moving around the galaxy, everything stays so perfectly in place.

In: 8

Answer 1

There can be some wiggle and jiggle in orbits and paths, just at the scale of the universe and the scale of human lifetimes, it’s not noticeable. Gravity drops off with inverse square law, so the biggest factors affecting Earth other than the moon and sun would be Jupiter and Saturn, but only over tens or hundreds of thousands of years.