Our solar system mostly revolves around the sun on the same axis (apart from Pluto). Our galaxy does the same (along with other galaxies). Why? Gravity is linear?

Would it matter if we tried to escape the sun’s gravity by going “up?”

  • Brewchin@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    77
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    2 months ago

    I asked this question many years ago on a Usenet group, and the answer was along the lines of what we’re seeing is many millions of years after those orbits began, and that they all eventually flatten out due to the gravity of the other objects in orbit.

    So you could have 2 objects at roughly the same orbital distance but perpendicular to one another (eg. one orbiting the star’s poles and the other around it’s equator), and over time the small amount of gravitational force they exert on one another will bring them roughly into the same plane.

    Hopefully someone better versed in the topic can come along to explain it better than I can.