Why Is The Solar System Flat? - Science ABC

The flatness of the solar system can be ascribed to the law of conservation of total angular momentum. This law states that whenever particles collide, they may move in any direction, but all the up and down motion cancels out, always following the rule that the total spin in that plane must be constant. Over time and after countless collisions, these particles lose their freedom in everything except 2-dimensional space, thereby aligning themselves in a plane.

The flatness of our solar system can be ascribed to the law of conservation of total angular momentum. Due to this, whenever particles collide, they may move in any direction, but all the up and down motion cancels out, always following the rule that the total spin in that plane must be constant.

We all know that the Earth, the other planets and their moons all revolve around the Sun in elliptical orbits. However, have you ever stopped to wonder why these celestial objects move around the Sun in such a way that the Solar System appears to be lying on a plane, rather than going every which way?

We have learnt in our classes, and it is common knowledge, that nature prefers spherical orientations. From the tiniest drop of water in zero gravity to the shape of our planet, spheres are nature’s favorite shape. Even the Sun, the largest object in our cosmic neighborhood, is also – you guessed it – a sphere! So why is it that all these planets, asteroids, meteors and moons chose to lie in a plane, endlessly circling in a two-dimensional dance?

Think about Saturn’s rings, which are also disc-like. Even the asteroid belt lies in a flat plane. This is not a strange exception of our Solar System either; other galaxies billions of light-years away are oriented in a similar way. The Milky Way, our home galaxy, is a group of nebulae, stars and rocks flatly suspended in space due to mutual gravitational attraction.

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