Earthed - How do planets move and what keeps them in place?

How do planets move and what keeps them in place?

I was just researching things about space and things but I would like to know a bit more about the planets movement. I know the planets move, but how?

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as the rugrats woulds say "grabity" the sun has a powerful pull on all the planets in our solar system.
Planets are held in place by the gravitational pull of the Sun, the orbit around the Earth at different rates, the further away from the Sun you are the colder and longer it is to go round the sun.
gravity
The planets also rotate around invisible axes through their centres. A planet's rotation period is known as its day. All planets in the Solar System rotate in a counter-clockwise direction, except for Venus, which rotates clockwise(Uranus is generally said to be rotating clockwise as well though because of its extreme axial tilt, it can be said to be rotating either clockwise or anti-clockwise, depending on whether one states it to be inclined 82° from the ecliptic in one direction, or 98° in the opposite direction). There is great variation in the length of day between the planets, with Venus taking 243 Earth days to rotate, and the gas giants only a few hoursThe rotational periods of extrasolar planets are not known; however their proximity to their stars means that hot Jupiters are tidaly locked (their orbits are in sync with their rotations). This means they only ever show one face to their stars, with one side in perpetual day, the other in perpetual night
It's all about the gravitational pull of other planets effecting each other, plus a large part of the universe is made up of 'dark matter'. Nobody knows what dark matter is, just that it has to be there otherwise the planets wouldn't stay in place. You should do a search for dark matter or a documentary called 'some of the universe is missing'.
Gravity.

The attraction of the planets to the Sun keeps them in their orbits. The reason they don't fall *into* the sun is because they travel just fast enough away from the Sun to avoid doing that but *not* fast enough to reach an escape velocity that would allow them to leave their orbits.

Both of which are very good things. :p
orbit. they move on an axis. they move 'round and 'round.
Sir Isaac Newton explained why the earth and the other planets go around the sun in orbits, or revolve. He knew that objects on the earth fell to the ground when they were not held up by something. He thought that this same force might hold the moon and planets in their orbits. After much study and many calculations, he was able to show that this is true. He taught us that every body in the solar system, and everywhere else for that matter, pulls on every other body. This force is called gravitation.

If gravitation were the only force acting on bodies, everything would be pulled together into one large lump, if we waited long enough. All of the planets and the sun and moon and stars would pull each other together in one place. So Newton knew that there must be something that prevented this. He discovered that any moving object will keep on moving at a constant speed in a straight line unless something happens to make it speed up, slow down, or change its direction. This property of matter is called inertia. This may seem strange at first, because we are used to seeing things that are in motion slow down and stop, or fall to the ground if they are thrown through the air. But this is because something is making them slow down and stop, or fall to the ground. An object that is pushed along the ground stops because friction makes it stop. And the gravitational pull of the earth makes an object that is thrown through the air fall to the ground.

Out in space there is practically no friction. The planets are all moving very rapidly through space, and their motion is not slowed to any great extent by friction. But there is one force that acts on the planets and makes them keep changing their direction. This force is the gravitational pull of the sun. As a planet rushes along, this pull makes it swerve toward the sun. The planet does not move directly toward the sun because its inertia tends to keep it moving in a straight line. Instead, the inertia of the planet and the pull of the sun combine to make the planet keep going around and around the sun in an orbit. The orbits of the planets are not perfect circles. Instead, the orbit of each planet is an ellipse. An ellipse is like a circle that has been flattened somewhat so that it is longer in one direction than the other. The sun is not at the center of a planet's orbit, but closer to one end that the other. The more a planet's orbit is flattened, the farther the sun is from the center.

At the same time the planets revolve around the sun in their orbits, they spin around, or rotate. The axis is an imaginary line through the center of a planet around which it rotates. The axis of the earth passes from the North Pole to the South Pole through the center of the earth. As the earth rotates, it carries places on its surface around from west to east. That is why the sun, moon, stars, and other bodies appear to move across the sky from east to west each day, but they also seem to move about among the stars. This is because they are moving around the sun in their orbits. As they move along in their orbits from day to day, we see them in front of different stars.
The simple answer is, as has been stated.. Gravity, everything in space has its own gravitational field. As gravitational fields pull at eachother you get the effect of a planet being held in its orbit by the sun while not getting pulled Into the sun because of its own gravitational field.
Nothing keeps them in place. That's why they move. At least, from a certain perspective on the question. :-)
Planets began moving as a swirling disk of matter, (as wide as the solar system), unable to be captured by the sun. Over several hundred million years, the largest pieces of the disk attracted the matter around them and became the planets. With no outside force to stop them, the planets continue to revolve around the sun, and are kept in place by gravity
gravity of course and orbits (i think)