By that, I mean, why do planets always orbit… horizontally(?) around the sun. Why not vertically? Space is a 3D space, I’d course. So why would the planets not end up going up as well as sideways?
Edit: Space science is a lot more complicated than I thought, and I am here for this rabbit hole. Ty everyone for your answers so far!
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Using the most popular opinion and understanding.
Imagine a spinning disk of pizza dough. When you spin the dough, it flattens out into a circular shape, right? This is because of the dough’s rotation and the forces acting on it.
When our Solar System was forming, it started as a giant cloud of gas and dust. As it began to collapse under its own gravity, it started to spin. As it spun, it flattened out into a disk shape, much like our spinning pizza dough. This is due to the conservation of angular momentum.
Most of the material in this spinning disk then began to form the Sun in the center, and the remaining bits gradually formed the planets. Because the original gas and dust was mostly in this flat disk, the planets that formed also stayed in that flat plane.
So, the reason planets orbit in roughly the same plane (or “horizontally” as you said) is because of the way the Solar System formed.
But there are exceptions:
– Some objects in our solar system don’t orbit neatly within the main plane, which is known as the ecliptic plane.Pluto is a prime example. It orbits the Sun at an inclination of about 17 degrees to the ecliptic. Pluto is like a pepperoni that slid off to the edge, so it’s not perfectly on the flat pizza. It’s kind of tilted.
– Some of the outer moons of the gas giants, like Jupiter and Saturn, have highly inclined or even retrograde orbits (they orbit in the opposite direction to the planet’s rotation). These moons are believed to have been captured after the formation of the solar system.
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