• Question: what forces make all the planets orbit the sun?

    Asked by ChrismdTGS to Connor, Jillian, Lidunka, Sarah, Steven on 15 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Lidunka Vocadlo

      Lidunka Vocadlo answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      Gravity. The sun is big and therefore has an enormous gravitational pull on the planets. And there are a bunch of equations (Keplers Laws) which tell us how planets move about the sun. These laws basically say that all planets have elliptical orbits.

    • Photo: Jillian Scudder

      Jillian Scudder answered on 17 Jun 2015:

      It’s fundamentally gravity that keeps us stuck here, in combination with centripetal force! Without the gravitational pull of the sun, we’d go slinging off into the galaxy.

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