Why doesn't the sun's gravity pull all the planets into it?

Answer 1

It does. To a greater or less extent. All the planets are moving away from the sun within our galaxy, due to the ever lasting impact of The Big Bang, over 14 billion years ago, even to the extent that the moon is moving away from Earth one and a half inch every year.Hence, the pulling effect is way too less as compared to the pushing effect.

Answer 2

In a way, that is exactly what the sun's gravity is doing. The sun's gravity is balanced by the orbital velocity of the planets, which comes from the spiraling of the materials in the accretion disk that formed the planets as they got closer to the sun. Since the space in the vacinity of the solar system is a reasonably good vacuum, nothing impedes or seriously slows down the planets in their orbits. If there were a lot of stuff in space like atmosphere, then we would have a problem-- or we wouldn't have a problem. The planets would have slowed down and spiraled into the sun long ago.

Answer 3

The Sun's gravity pulls the planets and other object towards the sun. They do not fall in because they are moving quickly in orbits which take them round in near-circles, actually ellipses. The Earth travels in its almost circular orbit, and the Sun's pull makes it curve to the left (seen from above the north pole) to keep it in its orbit. Without gravity the Earth would fly off in a straight line.

Answer 4

It does ! That's why Earth stays in orbit around the sun. If there were no

gravitational forces pulling the Earth and Sun together, then Earth would

take off and sail away in a straight line.

Answer 5

The Earth doesn't move towards the Sun because of the gravitional force of the sun. Earht's orbit is in a perpendicular orbit to the gravitional force of the sun.