Why do all the planets orbit the sun in the same general direction?

Question

Why aren't there any planets that orbit in an opposite direction, and is it the same behaviour for moons orbiting the planets?

Answer 1

The orbital plane has planets slinging out from the middle of a rotating sun, as the rings of Saturn do around its middle, because of a flow that is slung out from the rotating body that thence returns into the rotating body at the poles. The planets in the orbital plane slung out from the middle of the sun are thus held away by this sling.

Planets do not flow with the sling round to the poles of the sun, because this would involve a trip too far away from the sun, a gravitational giant, before the trip back. The gravitational draw here can be envisioned as a string from the center of the sun to the planet.

Planets move, in concert, in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction around a sun due to sweeping arms that reach out from the core of the rotating sun, brushing the planets before them. These sweeping arms can be envisioned as the spokes of a wheel.

Planets stay in the orbital plane and do not drift to either side because of what we will refer to as eddy currents. The sling out is not solely at the waist of the rotating sun but slings out at a diminishing rate on either side, but the rate outward is greater at the waist. Thus, when the material being slung out from the middle of the rotating sun tries to escape to the sides, it is caught and pulled back by the slower pace of the material at the sides, creating a circular eddy current that returns it to the waist of the rotating sun. This eddy current can be envisioned as flotsam on a river and the manner in which this gets drawn into the center of the river, where the fastest flow occurs.

Planets find their niche in all this based on more than gravity or magnetism factors, as there are thousands of forces that affect the placement of bodies free to move about in space. The entry of a new planet into the orbital plane would results in a bumping outward or compressing inward of existing planets as this new planet encountered the others during their journeys around the sun, until no further adjustments were required and an equilibrium was established.

Answer 2

The planets don't all orbit the sun in the same direction. Venus orbits in the opposite direction to the rest.

Answer 3

Because the planets and sun probably formed from the same spinning disk (called the solar nebula).

Here. This explains things:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formation_and_evolution_of_the_solar_system#Solar_nebula

As for moons orbiting planets ... the inner moons of the gas giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune) do all orbit in the same direction and probably formed out of the same nebular disk. A second class of moon (our own moon for example) probably formed by collision with another object (we can tell because its spin is aligned with its orbit around its planet). And a third class are asteroids captured by the gravity of the planet (e.g., Mars's two moons). These second two classes of moons don't necessarily orbit in the same direction as the planets orbit the sun.

This is a different section on the same page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formation_and_evolution_of_the_solar_system#Moons

Answer 4

planets orbits are the sun in the same general direction. my understanding is all the planets are orbit sun in the same direction.

Answer 5

because it that way you can also ask the sun it knows