why do all planets go around the sun in the same direction and why do the planets all lie in a flat plane?
611187
thats the way the earth works and was created! yay
936747
The planets all condensed from the same dust cloud. This cloud was in orbit around the sun and was rotating. As a result of the rotation it was spun out into a disk - this is called an accretion disk and is seen around a lot of stars. So all of the planets condensed out of a disk and hence are in the same plane.\n\nSome objects orbiting the sun did not condense from this disk but were captured. These are typically not in the plane of the ecliptic. Pluto - recently removed from the canon of planets - is in this category.
354530
Each planet is attracted to the Sun by the Sun's gravity.\n\nHowever each planet is traveling at a certain speed tangential to its orbit. \n\nThe sun's gravity curves (pulls in) the trajectory of the planet.\n\nThe faster the planet is moving, the further it can get away from the Sun.\n\nA kind of balance between the speed of the planet and the Sun's gravity at the location of the planet result in the final orbit of the planet.\n\nIf we were to speed up a planet, its orbit would move outwards.\n\nIf we were to slow down a planet, its orbit would move inwards (towards the Sun).\n\nCordially,\nJohn\nhttp://www.GodSci.org
1162718
Because the sun does rise in the east and set in the west.  \n\nWe do know now that the reason is not because the sun is revolving around the earth, but because the earth spins on its axis.
453860
Because the same face of the planet is not shown to sun all the time. The planet revolves as well as spin about its axis. so face that is exposed to sun changes with time. This is the very reason for day and night.
991215
Because the sun has a gravitational pull on all objects that rotate around it. The earth, like all the other planets revolving around the sun, is pulled toward it to a certain extent, which keeps the earth from floating away into outer space.
568567
Your teacher.\n\nThe sun is the center of our solar system (thus the terminology), and all of the planets circle around the sun.\n\nJust to clarify on one point...The sun is not the center of the universe.  It is the center of our solar system.  There are thousands of solar systems in our universe, and our sun is not at the center of these.
368925
Other planets since all nine planets revolve around the sun so when you're on one side of the sun,other planets are probably on the other side!
47522
In a nutshell, planets are round because they are sufficiently massive to attract all of the material towards the centre.  When a planet forms, it is made of molten rock, that is very much like a liquid.  This liquid rock will try to take the path of least resistence (the shortest path) to the centre.  The only shape that would allow liquid on every spot of the surface the same ammount of effort is a sphere. Today, rocky planets still have molten cores and this shaping process continues.
359195
All planets are tilted, just not to that extreme...   It is more than likely that it had a close encounter with a large object in its past.  But what the crap do you mean that it moves sidewards?  Its in a relatively normal orbit, how does it move sideways?  I think a more interesting question is why does Venus spin clockwise?
627517
The sun is the center of the solar system, revolving around it are the nine planets namely: mercury, venus, earth, mars, jupiter, saturn, uranus, neptune and pluto.
1094922
The Earth is continually rotating on its axis.\n\nIn short, the Earth rotates because it has to in order to help conserve angular momentum in the universe.\n\nThere is a physical Law which states that angular momentum must always be conserved.\n\nThe big ball of gas and debris which out solar system was formed from had some value for its angular momentum (even if that value was zero).  When the sun and the planets formed from that material, in order to conserve the angular momentum, the planets and sun started rotating.  If you add up all the angular momentum there is now between all the planets/the sun, moons/.... it should come out to be the same value as the angular momentum of the material which formed out solar system.
515806
The earth rotates on its axis (spins) the same way as the sun does on its axis, since the planets all formed out of the proto-solar disc when the sun was forming.  All of the planets spin the same way, EXCEPT for Venus, which rotates (very slowly, once every 243 days) in the opposite direction.  Some planetary scientists consider this evidence that Venus at one time collided with another large body early in its lifetime, which caused the retrograde rotation.
520855
We think that the planets all formed pretty much at the same time. However the sun probably formed first. The leftover gas and dust remained in a disk around the sun. In this disk, stuff began to clump and form "planetesimals" (pronounced pla-ne-TE-si-mals). These are small rocky bodies, something like asteroids. They crashed into each other and eventually formed the inner planets. At the same time, planetesimals formed the cores of the outer planets Jupiter and Saturn. Because of their strong gravity, they swept up a lot of gas. Uranus and Neptune did this too, but there was less gas around because Jupiter and Saturn got it first. The asteroid belt may be left-over planetesimals that never formed a planet because Jupiter's strong gravity nearby kept it from forming.
711345
Earth orbits in a counterclock wise direction around the sun.\nIt takes approximately 365.25 days do orbit around the sun.\nThe gravitational forces between the sun and earth and the resulting centripetal and centrufugal forces makes the earth go around.
634670
It has to do with the formation of the planets from the solar nebula based on the "nebular hypothesis."  That is why they are all on different orbits.
407938
It is a factor in their formation. As matter gravitationally comes in proximity with other matter, the "pieces" start orbiting one another. As other pieces join the group, they influence all the other pieces in the group simultaneously, so the whole set of objects tends to change it's axis of rotation as a group. In the end, there is a cluster of objects that all tend to rotate within the same general plane or around the same axis of rotation.\n\nFor example, most of the planets in the solar system rotate on an axis that is very similar to their axis of revolution around the sun. This is because the "pieces" of mater that formed the solar system started rotating around (orbiting) one another in a single plane. As some of the pieces crashed into one another and combined into planets, stars, etc. some of the orbital energy was transformed into rotational energy, but with angular momentum in the same direction as the rotational energy. Thus revolution and rotation are generally in the same direction with similar axes.