Question:

If the below statement is true what force caused the planets to start rotating. ?

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.Planets and every object in space rotates. Planets and stars form from a rotating disk of dust and gas (called nebula). Since there is no friction in space, there is nothing to stop the rotation.

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  1. Simply put:

    The planet condensed from a cloud of gas and dust orbiting the sun right.

    Imagine two particles in stable orbits.

    The inner one moves faster than the outer one right?

    Now pull them together.

    The difference in their speeds goes into rotation of the new combined body

    in an orbit between their two previous orbits..

    (Conservation of momentum.)


  2. hanaaaaaa - you've got some cheek for criticising Cosmo's English!

  3. The angular momentum of objects in the Solar System originated in the angular momentum of the interstellar cloud from which it condensed.  Since that cloud was about a hundred thousand times bigger in radius, the velocity of its rotation was tiny---simply a bit of random motion in the somewhat chaotic velocity field of the Milky Way.  It's all a matter of conservation of angular momentum, plus a huge contraction in size.

  4. ok i dont know wtf that first guy said lol .. but in english...

    i think its cause u know every mass has a gravitational force? well so every planet and star and everything had its own gravity so they all kinda like pulled eachother towards eachother all in different directions and they kept moving until they fell into this spot where the forces that were pulling them were equal from all directions so they just all fell into their place like that and continued spinning cause of the gravity of the other planets and theirs just pulling them all in different directions

    well im not sure it just seems to make sence so its what i think

    hope im right lol

  5. Tie a string to a post. Put a lead fishing sinker on the end of the string. Throw the sinker in such a way that the string starts to wrap around the post. As the length of as-yet unwrapped string gets shorter, the angular speed of the sinker will get faster, thus illustrating the principle that Cosmo and Larry mentioned: the conservation of angular momentum.

    Every atom in the nebula is like the lead fishing sinker on the string, except instead of a string the force comes from gravity. As the distance from the center of rotation becomes shorter, the angular speed of the atom must increase.

  6. its really easy to show you on paper.

    ah, well.

    picture a cloud of dust with NOTHING around it... its not rotating around itself, or anything else.  This is a fictional dustball as everything is moving around something, no?

    Sam is a dust mite in the middle of the cloud.  Lets look at all the forces being applied to Sam.  (imagine tine vector arrows popping up in all directions off Sam, like a porky-pine).  Notice, all the arrows are random and can be said to cancel out.  As Sam is in the middle of the cloud, he is not being pulled in any particular direction.

    Now, let's look at Tip.  He is a dust mite on the edge of the cloud.  Notice that when you examine all the forces on Tip, they are all pulling in more or less one direction.

    Which way will Tip move?  What will happen as all the outer Dust Mites try to squeeze into the middle?

    These questions as more, will be answered on the next episode of....

    Yahoo Answers.

  7. Robin -

    Cosmo is correct. The easiest analogy is the spinning ice skater. An ice skater spins slowly until she pulls her arms inward, then she speeds up. This is due to the conservation of angular momentum. So a large area of gas and dust that is moving in one direction on one side and on a slightly different direction on the other side has a very small net rotation. If that area of gas and dust gathers closer due to gravity, the rotation will be accelerated. The closer the stuff gathers, the faster the rotation.

    It all starts with a cloud of gas and dust that is not all going in the same direction. As that cloud shrinks, it will rotate - first slowly, and gradually more rapidly.  

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