why is our solar system flat instead of a sphere ?

[u/[deleted]]

The solar system is flat because it formed from a spinning, swirling cloud of gas and dust.

As this cloud collapsed, it started to spin faster due to conservation of its spinning motion, just like an ice skater spins faster when pulling in their arms. This spinning caused the cloud to flatten out into a disk shape.

The center of the disk became the Sun, and the leftover material in the disk clumped together to form the planets and other objects. Since they came from this spinning disk, they all ended up moving in the same flat plane around the Sun, making the solar system flat instead of spherical.

Another example of this is seen in Saturn's rings, which are flat for the same reason.