Why did the planets form on the same orbital in our solar system?

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The planets in our system are all orbiting the sun on a “disc” like plane within 3° of each others orbital plane. Why? Can planets in other solar systems form on multiple orbital planes forming a sphere of orbits instead of a flat disc?

In: Physics

3 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Stars form from clouds of gas and dust. As they form they start to spin, as clumps of matter hit them. As they get bigger their gravity starts to affect the dust cloud around them, and begins to spin it into a disc shape. This is called an accretion disk.

So you have a big spinning disk of dust with a star at the middle. The rest of the planets form from this spinning disc, hence they’re all in the same plane.

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