Why do planets move around the Sun in the way they do?
One of the questions that bother science lovers all over the world is: why do the planets go in a counterclockwise direction around the Sun?
And in addition, the Sun moves in the opposite direction around the center of the galaxy, so just like the hands of a clock go around their center!
First of all, it should be emphasized that the planets around the Sun go counter-clockwise – only if viewed above the north pole of the Sun. And which pole of the Sun is north, and which is south – it is arbitrarily determined because there is no natural basis for one pole to be exactly south and the other north.
Just like on Earth: North is where we are, ie. Europe, and to the south where they are, the Australians. If the first maps of the world were drawn by Aboriginal people, we would probably be “down there”, in the southern hemisphere of the Earth.
But how did it happen that the planets revolve around the Sun in exactly that direction?
Well, the answer to that question takes us back to the age when the solar system was born. The Sun was formed from a rotating cloud of dust and gas (solar nebula).
In short, a large part of the cloud, under the influence of gravity, collapsed into a sphere from which the Sun will emerge a little later. At the same time, the rotation of the nebula led to the creation of a disc of material around the newly formed Sun.
Over time, gravity caused clumps of matter, and these clumps will then form planets – which will continue orbiting the Sun in the direction already started. We call this direction prograde or direct movement.
So, there is no mystery.
In fact, it could happen that the solar cloud began to rotate in the opposite direction and the planets would also move in the same way, i.e. in the opposite direction (which is the so called retrograde or indirect movement) and in that case we would ask: why do the planets move in that direction?
The answer is: by pure chance!
Therefore, chance caused exactly this kind of movement. The cloud itself received some initial impulse for its rotation, perhaps from some star that in the distant past rushed past it and set it in motion.
Nature is truly an unpredictable master.
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