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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No answer for you, but I think what you’re looking for is planar movement. Or why the planets orbit roughly on the same plane in 3d space. Not “horizontally”
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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.
Your question should be “why do planets all orbit in roughly the same plane in a solar system”
A star forms from a cloud of gas and dust, and that cloud of gas is rotating somehow, it doesn’t really matter what direction. As time passes, the cloud forms into more of a disk, rotating in the same axis as that’s the cloud did. Eventually the star forms, and then the planet form from that disk, all rotating around the same axis.
This is the same reason spiral galaxies are flat, and why Saturn’s rings are flat, and why most things orbit their parent body in a roughly equatorial orbit.
Small irregular galaxies are usually just bits ripped off of larger galaxies, and large elliptical galaxies are the result of smaller galaxies colliding. Outside forces remove that central axis of rotation from the initial cloud of dust.
The planets come from the same stuff.
Before there were planets there was a big spinning soup of stuff around the young sun.
All the stuff that would later become the planets was in this big, very fast spinning soup disc.
Because we were all spinning in the same soup, it all flattened on the same plane, then gravity made stuff congeal into planets.
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