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
It is called [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_inclination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_inclination) and is quite close to the same for planets and most other object close to the sun. It is quite close to the equatorial plane of the sun too.
If you look at objects farther away too like the Kuiper belt and Oort cloud the inclination rate increases and at the Ooortcloud you find all possible orbits https://planetplanetdotnet.files.wordpress.com/2023/05/image.png
The explanation is the planets and the sun was not formed intentionally. All is formed by collapsing gas clouds. When everything starts to orbit the common center of mass there will be more collision between objects that have different orbital inclinations.
let’s just look at circular robbits then orbital speed only depends on the distance from the center. Objects that orbit in the same plane will not collide with each other but will intersect all other orbital planes at the same distance. So the only way for stuff to orbit with no collision is in a disc
Over time the results of collision and gravitational effect will result in that most materials have close to the same inciation where they can orbit with the least amount of collisions.
Orbits are not just circles, they are all ellipses so the effect is that most stuff will orbit in close to the same plane.
Even after planets are formed they interact with gravity. The direction of the force with tidal effect on the object makes them all move towards the same plane.
The reason there is more variation farther away from the sun is there is a lot less stuff there The interaction that made the center pare closet a plane has a smaller not realy effect at all so objects in the Oort cloud orbit the sun in all plants.
The total mass of the Oort cloud is around 2 times the mass of the Earth. The cloud. The distance from the sun ranges from 2,000 to 200,000 AU. 1 AU is the distance between Earth and the sun. All planets aw with 30 AU from the sun. The Oort cloud is made up of billions of objects that orbit in 3D.
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