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!
In: 2352
Horizontally and vertically are only relative terms in space. What you mean is that the planets generally orbit around roughly the same plane. Solar systems begin life as clouds of dust of various elements. These clump together in barycenters and form stars or planets and these clouds are called protoplanetary disks.
The reason why they turn into disks from uniform clouds and why they spin is because as all the mass surges towards specific points and clumps this inevitably induces a spin, to the clumps being formed and the gas cloud as a whole, like pizza dough flattening out as it’s spinned. A “dominant” plane emerges so to speak which is an orbital plane that has the majority of the mass of the material in the cloud. As planets form they “clear up” the rest of the molecules in the cloud either because their gravitational attraction pulls them to them or through collisions. Over billions of years this clears up most random bodies not in the dominant plane and the result is a solar system where most planets are orbiting roughly in the same plane. Foreign bodies like asteroids or comets that come from outside the solar system may still orbit at other planes but the majority of the material orbiting in other planes has been essentially “vaccuumed up” by the larger bodies.
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