Question: Why does the world not fall through space?

Padraic Morrissey answered on 12 Feb 2015:

Great question! The world kind of does fall through space, but in a special way. The sun is the centre of our solar system and has a very strong gravitational field. This means that everything gets pulled towards it. The earth keeps on trying to pull away from the sun but the gravity pulls it back towards it. What ends up happening is that the earth actually falls through space around the sun and this is what we call an “orbit”. It takes 365 days for the earth to complete one of these orbits which is what we call a year!

If you think outside of our solar system, the same thing is happening on a bigger scale. Our galaxy is orbiting around a bigger galaxy, that has an incredibly strong gravitational field. So in a way we are always falling through space but never realise it!

Space is really interesting and if you want to know more I can send you interesting links where it explains gravity in a bit more detail!