What keeps the Earth from drifting out into space?
In: Physics
All other answers are correct when one looks at classical physics. (which are outdated but good enough for laypeople)
I’ll explain to you how it really is when one considers relativistic physics:
Gravitation bends what we call spacetime. Don’t get confused about time, that has nothing to do with your question.
I’m sure you have seen pictures like [this.](https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-cf5713fec706e2b8c4c4ed9b1916c939.webp) This seems intuitively right but it’s nothing more than a model for something we cannot really comprehend in classical terms. Earth in this picture is following the orbit but as there is no force acting on it (gravity is no real force) it is always traveling in a straight path that just happens to end where it started. Think like your an ant on a basketball. If such a ant is walking in a straight line it will end up at the exact same place as where you started. That’s because the basketball is curved. 4D-Spacetime (3 spatial and 1 temporal) is also curved, it just happens to be curved in a dimension that is hard for us to comprehend. From the perspective of the ant the ball is flat (2D) while the ball in reality is volumetric (3D). What we perceive when we look at the solarsystem is 3D while in reality it is 4D.
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