Is there a reason that all of the planets orbit around the sun in the same direction and on the same plane? Would it be possible for another body to orbit perpendicular to our ecliptic plane?
3 thoughts on “Why Do The Planets Orbit On The Same Ecliptic Plane?”
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IIRC it has something to do with centrifugal force of the same force that keeps a bicycle wheel spinning or something like that. Though why this applies in space, where there is no “ground” gravity, is beyond me.
The theory is that the original cloud of material out of which the Solar System was formed had some motion. As most of the material got pulled into the Sun, the spin increased in the direction of most of the motion. Of course the Sun got a lot of the spin, but in the material which did not end up in the Sun there were collisions and gravitational attraction which made most of the remaining cloud spin. Of course, material which did not have enough motion fell into the Sun. Gravitational attraction of this rotating disk would tend to pull nearby material toward it, disrupting other directions of motion. Once Jupiter and the other gas giants formed, their areas of gravitational influence disrupted almost all nearby motion in other directions. Anything not near the plane of the ecliptic is probably small and either outside Neptune’s orbit or in sync with Jupiter’s orbit.
The Solar System’s plane of the ecliptic is probably related to the Milky Way’s ecliptic, as most material in the area probably originated in the latter and tended to have similar motions.
Inertia keeps a wheel spinning friction with the ground and air slow it down. Centrifugal force operates independant of gravity and has to do with the motion of a spinning body, not gravity. spin a bucket filled with water around on a string and centrifugal force holds the water in. This is true regardless of “ground gravity”