Saturn and its rings, our solar system, the Milky Way – Why are they (and the bodies orbiting them) in such a neatly flat shape and not more akin to how electrons are often depicted orbit an atom in all directions?
In: Physics
If objects are orbiting in all different directions sooner or later they collide tends to cancel out their momentum at an angle to the average direction of motion, so what’s left is everything going the same way, ie a disc.
Think of a multi-lane highway that everybody is going at the same speed but weaving in and out in regular ways. The collisions will be side to side and tend to straighten everybody’s path out until all are moving straight down the road and collisions become less and less frequent.
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