• Question: What makes planets move?

    Asked by 426ntrd29 to Chloe, Irene, Pierre, NULL, Uday on 9 Nov 2015.
    • Photo: Pierre Casaubielh

      Pierre Casaubielh answered on 9 Nov 2015:

      Hello,

      Pertinent question 🙂 .
      Before planets were created, there were dust and gases in very large quantities in space: the understanding of the formation of a solar system has been understood by observing other solar system formation (a sun surrounded by planets).

      Gases and dusts reacted, combined and attracted to each other (inducing an initial motion) and then creating planets. The solar systems are always in motion. Then the solar system motion and the force of centrifuge helps having planets moving.

      Regards.
      Pierre.

    • Photo: NULL

      NULL answered on 9 Nov 2015:

      It’s not really my area of science.

      But the way I see it, it’s because they’re great big heavy things and once they start moving, it’s hard to stop them.

      Why did they start moving is a good question, but I imagine gravity is behind it all. Heavy things in space tend to move towards each other. once you get a few of them near each other, they can end up being pulled in lots of different directions, and end up doing funny dances around each other, or just orbiting the biggest one (which is the sun).

      When you get a lot of them together, they also hit off each other too – which can send them spinning.

    • Photo: Chloe Huseyin

      Chloe Huseyin answered on 17 Nov 2015:

      The planets move because nothing has stopped them since they were created. In space there isn’t any resistance like friction (like we have on Earth) to slow things down so they keep moving.

    • Photo: Irene Regan

      Irene Regan answered on 17 Nov 2015:

      Everything in the Solar System orbits or revolves around the Sun.
      The Sun contains around 98% of all the material in the Solar System.
      The larger an object is, the more gravity it has. Because the Sun is so large, its powerful gravity attracts all the other objects in the Solar System towards it.
      At the same time, these objects, which are moving very rapidly, try to fly away from the Sun, outward into the emptiness of outer space.
      The result of the planets trying to fly away, at the same time that the Sun is trying to pull them inward is that they become trapped half-way in between.
      Balanced between flying towards the Sun, and escaping into space, they spend eternity orbiting around their parent star.

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