What's up or down?

Question

What is above or below the Earth. Meaning if a rocket was launched from the south pole & just went down or launched at the north pole and went straight up, what would be there? I only ask because it seems that the galaxy & planets are all on the same plane.

Answer 1

Though our solar system is seemingly planar, the universe is not. Currently this is one of the important questions in cosmology: what is the shape and nature of the universe. Some theories suggest that it is multiply connected, which means that if you keep going in the same direction forever, you'll wind up at the same place you started. Other theories suggest that the universe is infinite, so you'll keep going, through other galaxies and solar systems and never see the same thing twice. And still other theories say that the universe is finite, and has a fixed shape, meaning that you can go all the way to the edge (and perhaps beyond).

But which of these theories is the correct one is a question that will take us a very long time to answer.

Answer 2

Within our solar system, there are some asteroids and comets that don't have their orbits in the ecliptic (the plane of Earth's orbit), but not very many that we know about. Even the gas and dust in the solar system tend to cluster in the plane of the ecliptic.

While the galaxy is much "wider" than it is "thick", there are still lots of stars to the celestial north and south of Earth. To the north is Polaris, and to the south a constellation called the Southern Cross is very close to the earth's axis.

Eventually, you would leave the galaxy and enter intergalactic space. I'm not sure if there are known galaxies exactly north or south of Earth along the axis, though.

Answer 3

Down is the direction gravity pulls you. The Earth's south pole in not "down". That is just a map making rule, to show south at the bottom of the map. We could have made up the rule any way we wanted, with north at the bottom of all maps, or even west. It is just a map making rule. The direction "down" is defined by gravity and it is toward the center of the globe, not toward the south pole.

The planets of our solar system are mostly near the same plane, but the stars outside our solar system are not. They are north and south of the Earth. They are all around the Earth. You could say they are beside above and below Earth, but the terms "above" and "below" don't really mean anything in outer space.

Answer 4

Your confusion comes from that fact that we are used to gravity giving us a clear "up" and "down" for our normal experiences.

But in space there is no up or down - there is no gravity to create an up and down.

Once a ship leaves the Earth's gravitational field, all of space has no up or down or right or left - everything is completely free to move or be at any angle, in any direction.

The galaxies are not on the same plane, they are all in different orientations and directions.
Check out some of the Hubble photographs of other galaxies, and you'll see that they are angled all different ways and are located in all directions in the sky.

The planets all orbit the sun in a relatively flat plane (called the ecliptic) simply because the laws of gravity and motion make that the result (all the planets were formed from a rotating disk of material around the sun, so they all still move in the plane of that disk).

Answer 5

it does look like a flat disk but it isnt.there are stars above us too - the north star,remember? it is almost directly above the north pole of the earth and thts why we can locate the north direction in a starry night with the help of it.

Answer 6

Up and down are relative to gravity.

Once you're in space, there is no up or down. By convention, I believe that a right-hand rule may apply to galactic up and down, but it's only for name's sake.

In another galaxy whose plane is not parallel to The Milky Way's, their galactic up and down are in different directions.

Even on Earth, it's all relative. My "up" is almost the opposite direction as an Australian's "up" (I'm in Washington, DC). On the occasion that we both can see the Moon at the same time, its orientation to me is opposite as to his.

Answer 7

You would burn from the heat of the core of the earth. Hot Lava. Above the earth is the sky and space

Answer 8

Six bottles of beer will change the orientation of any explanation. I mean ah what the heck.

Answer 9

even the price of down went up

Answer 10

lotsa hydrogen and eventually more galaxies