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10th planet found?

2004-03-16, 6:47 AM #41

Impi

THX

Posts: 4,686

Quote:

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Mort-Hog:

I realise that all the planets, save for Pluto, orbit the sun in the same plane...but why? I imagine that planets came about because they were bits of rock flying through space that were caught in the Sun's gravity and started orbitting, and collided with other bits of rock to eventually form planets, that makes sense...but why would this all occur in the same plane? Bits of rock would be travelling at all sorts of angles and they should orbit around the diameter of the Sun, but why the same plane? why??</font>

Planets weren't formed by rocks flying around but by all the stuff that was left over, when the sun was formed. That this happened in the same plane is AFAIK because of the suns own rotation. By this rotation was a disk formed with rocks and gases and whatever traveling around the sun where then were the planets formed. You can see this in a smaller scale around the big planets in our system, like Saturn.

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Sorry for the lousy German

2004-03-16, 11:22 AM #42

Firefox

I'll be your pilot for this thread.

Posts: 352

Quote:

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">I realise that all the planets, save for Pluto, orbit the sun in the same plane...but why? I imagine that planets came about because they were bits of rock flying through space that were caught in the Sun's gravity and started orbitting, and collided with other bits of rock to eventually form planets, that makes sense...but why would this all occur in the same plane? </font>

Conservation of angular momentum. Think of what happens to pizza dough as a guy spins it around. The material wants to flatten out. It's seen in planetary systems, spiral galaxies, etc.

-Fox