The ocean is before us, and we are just now begining to wade past our knees.

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Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"The only way to explore the universe is to go and look." - Brian Cox
Well, the best way to find out is to go there and, find out. - Raven's Cry
'Evolution and science are one thing, but you don’t mess with Yoko Ono. Everybody knows that. ' - 386sx

What? You can't be serious!

Don't all the planets orbit in one direction?

No, there's by no means enough of them to form spiral arms, but there's really no doubting the general rotation...

Certainly if there were a few thousand more planets you might think otherwise...

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I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol.

Mine: "Perception isn't reality. It's merely an abstraction thereof, and quite often not a very good one at that."

Heinlein's: "Staying young requires the unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods." "Freedom begins when you tell Ms. Grundy to go fly a kite."

Well, I'm sure he would notice if someone goes and pulls the drainplug on the sun...

Yes, even I noticed this. You can not accurately describe the solar systems structure as a spiral... It is spiral only in as far as its round. The Galaxy yes. When spiral is used to describe Galaxies it is referring to the apparent arms and the decathlon wheal structure.

Are you thinking that Saturn's rings are a big spiral? How about the ringlet of Neptune? These are things that orbit something else, but I think spiral is not an accurate term for them. Spiral has an implication of curves tracing progressively inward or outward, as in the spiral of archimedes:


The solar system is not a spiral, and to answer mugs' question, I am serious.

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Forming opinions as we speak

Washington Irving didn't help matters any, with his story that everyone but C. Columbus thought that the world was flat. Popular literature has a dismaying tendency to trump actual learning.

Fred

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"For shame, gentlemen, pack your evidence a little better against another time."
-- John Dryden, "The Vindication of The Duke of Guise" 1684

If you lined up a thousand planets (they're all in inferior conjunction with respect to the outermost), drew a line connecting them all, and then let the planets move in circular orbits, the line would begin to form a spiral, would it not? It would be a logarithmic spiral, though.

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Fitting a three-parameter curve of uncertain form to ten points with three exceptions certainly brings one to the far edge of the known world. -- Bradley Ephron

Even if what you propose could otherwise be a meaningful justification of calling the Solar System a spiral, nothing in our solar system is in a circular orbit. Nothing is exactly coplanar, and you really need to take the orbits of the comets into account here. Spiral is definitely not the right term.

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Forming opinions as we speak

Hi Talanted Amateur: You might enjoy www.space.com which is a bit less stuffy = opinionated, but the average poster is not as educated as www.bautform.com You should also try General Science, the last on the list at www.bautform.com Neil

I'm glad to see my question/comment sparked a little conversation.I will admit my choice of words could have been better. So instead of spiral, what if I followed Euclidean geometry, which theorizes a flat universe, and had said rotating disc?