Question:

Wouldn't the majority of solar systems in a spiral galaxy spin the same way as the galaxy?

by Guest62443  |  earlier

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as per planets forming in a spiral solar system tend to spin the same direction as the star?

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  1. It turns out that galaxies in our local group do not spin randomly, but have a bias towards an orientation in a flat plane, and spinning in the same direction.

    While this might be true for solar systems in the galaxy, there are lots of local effects which may randomize it.  I don't think we have enough data yet for a statistical treatment.


  2. No. The spin of the planets in a solar system arises from the random residual angular momentum in the collapsing cloud that formed it. The cloud would always have been much, much smaller than the galaxy in which it resides, meaning that there is no significant difference in orbital characteristics from one side of the cloud to the other due to its orbit around the galaxy, and it could only be such differences that would generate a preferred spin direction for the planets which form from it.

  3. We do not know.

    In fact, there seems to be no connection.  Our own solar system is inclined by more than 90 degrees relative to the Galaxy.  If you prefer: we are orbiting the Sun in a direction opposite to the direction the Sun orbits the Galaxy.

    This would indicate that the final orientation of the spin axis in a collapsing cloud has a local trigger, not a Galactic one.

    But, once the collapsing cloud rotates as a whole, everything that forms from that cloud will share that rotation:  The central stars spins in the same direction, the planets orbit in the same direction,  major satellites should orbit their planet in the same direction, the original spin of the planets should be in the same direction (it took 4 billion years for the spin of Venus to be reduced from its original value -- blame the sun's tidal effect).

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