Spinning

Howcome the planet spins from left to right and not from top to bottom, or even right to left or from down to up ?

I think because the sun is spinning on it's own axis in a counter
clockwise motion, the earth is spinning in the same direction too
(counterclockwise).
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong anyone.

IMO: All things are affected by weak forces created within atomic particals or around them. Since atoms have spin, then collections of them would amplify the rotation and spin in concert unless disturbed. We don't spin because we overpower the forces and move around at will, unless we drink to much. We see that same spin all over, in drains, tornados do it, plants wind around poles etc. Direction probably has to do with perspective, above or below equator, or in the case of planets and solar systems a larger collection started it such as a galaxy. Eight of the planets spin along with the sun and nine of them revolve around it in the same direction. Neptune is the odd ball out that has one of it's poles pointed inward. Some large mass must have nailed it a while back if this theory has merit.

"If you really want to know, ask a politician, they know how to put a spin on things".



[edit on 5-2-2005 by AlabamaCajun]

Originally posted by Scaart
Howcome the planet spins from left to right and not from top to bottom, or even right to left or from down to up ?

A good website to explain this can be found at curious.astro.cornell.edu...

The scientific answer is that the earth (and all of the planets in our solar system) were originally a cloud of dust with a slight spin. When this cloud condensed into massive planets, the planets had to rotate on their axis in order to conserve the momentum in the original cloud (in addition to orbiting the center of the original cloud - the sun).

The earth does in fact wobble slighly, and it's vertical axis is continuosly changing. This is belived to be a combination of 3rd body gravitational effects (i.e. the moon, asteriods, other planets) and the dynamic nature of the earth itself (much of the planet is fluid, and the solid parts shift as well).

Hope this answers your question....

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I think it is just random chance at play.

I would guess that axis of rotation has a slightly higher tendency to be more parallel to the axis of revolution of a planet if accruing matter fell in along the various plane vectors to form it. But if there is some correlation, Uranus, which has an axis of rotation perpindicular to the axis of revolution, shows just how weak this is.

Add to that later collisions once the planets were formed [Moon colliding with Earth] and at that point the axis of spin could change easily to anything.

various revolving objects probably have a tendency to pull each other into a flattened plane. [Sheparding moons of Saturn's rings]

I wonder more about what would cause a spinning effect in the first place, on the original disk of matter forming the solar system. If you have a gravity well forming and debis from all vectors of 3D space around it falling towards it I would think the random vectors [inertia] would cancel one another out.
My only specualtion is some kind of coriallus effect from the spinning of the Galaxy as the gravity well forms. The gravity well becomes a moving target so to speak. Something falls towards a mass center, but as it falls the center moves, so it ends up taking a curved course to go towards the mass.
.

A good website to explain this can be found at curious.astro.cornell.edu...

good site Starwars. that was what my guess was gonna be and the site i was gonna use to back it up

Tahlen