system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Why are all the planets' orbits on the same plane?

Its almost as if they were just rolling around on the floor, is it possible for a planit to orbit the sun vertically?
gpt
The solar system formed from a disc of gas, so when this disc fragmented into planets and asteroids etc, these all had orbits that were still in the disc. Scattering from nearby passes of asteroids can kick stuff up a bit, but generally only for small objects, and not very many of them. There's nothing stopping a spaceship from orbiting the Sun in a polar orbit - it's just not where planets tend to form.

A disc is the natural shape you get if you have some angular momentum, and dissipation. Basically, any region of gas in space is going to have some net spin - the odds that all the motions exactly cancel out are extremely low - so when some gas collapses to form a proto-stellar nebula, the spin gets amplified and you have a strongly rotating system. The gas can also get warm through collisions and compressions, but it radiates this heat into space, gradually cooling down and reducing its pressure. This pressure is what holds up the gas in a ball. So as it reduces its pressure, the ball collapses, and eventually the only thing that's stopping it from collapsing all the way down is its centrifugal force - you end up with a rapidly rotating disc.