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Why are so many objects in space shaped like discs? | Michelle Thaller

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• Spinning discs are everywhere – just look at our solar system, the rings of Saturn, and all the spiral galaxies in the universe.
• Spinning discs are the result of two things: The force of gravity and a phenomenon in physics called the conservation of angular momentum.
• Gravity brings matter together; the closer the matter gets, the more it accelerates – much like an ice skater who spins faster and faster the closer their arms get to their body. Then, this spinning cloud collapses due to up and down and diagonal collisions that cancel each other out until the only motion they have in common is the spin – and voila: A flat disc.

Dr. Michelle Thaller is an astronomer who studies binary stars and the life cycles of stars. She is Assistant Director of Science Communication at NASA. She went to college at Harvard University, completed a post-doctoral research fellowship at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, Calif. then started working for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's (JPL) Spitzer Space Telescope. After a hugely successful mission, she moved on to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), in the Washington D.C. area. In her off-hours often puts on about 30lbs of Elizabethan garb and performs intricate Renaissance dances. For more information, visit NASA.

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TRANSCRIPT

MICHELLE THALLER: Rick, you have noticed one of the most wonderful and consistent patterns in the whole universe. The universe is very good at making spinning discs. Our solar system is a disc, and all the planets go around in basically the same plane, and they all go around in the same direction. Why should that be?

There are discs all over the place. I mean, think about the rings of Saturn. The rings of Saturn are also very, very thin, and they all go around in the same direction. Galaxies, spiral galaxies are one big disc with everything moving around a common center. Discs seem to be something that the universe likes to make. And, in fact, that really is true. And it has to do with a number of things. It has to do with the force of gravity and something called the conservation of angular momentum.

Now, gravity is very good at bringing stuff together and bringing it together so it becomes denser and denser and begins to fall into the center. Our solar system formed out of a giant cloud of dust and gas about 4 and 1/2 billion years ago. It was actually many trillions of miles across at first..

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