Like the saturn ring, why isn’t it surround the whole planet or the general shape of milky way galaxy is pretty much like a disc
Or the solar system
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The simplest answer to this is that the planet is spinning. It resists its own gravity around it’s equator because of centrifugal force. This small bulge is going to tug ever so slightly at orbits above and below it, over a long enough time frame it will bring the relatively small mass of the particles in the belt in to an equatorial orbit.
Edit: and we can actually harness this process to do what’s called a sun-synchronous orbit, using the extra bulge and it’s tug to keep an orbit precessing around a body. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun-synchronous_orbit
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