solar and galactic planes question

[padren]

Since all the planets move around the sun on an elipitcal plane with the exceptions of mercury (7degrees) and pluto (17) is the general solar plane even with the milkyway's galatic plane?

 

If so, are most planetary or binary star orbits also close the same plane, or is it pretty random?

 

Also, I read somewhere that the solar system actually dips down and comes up on a sine wave like pattern relative to the galactic plane - do we know what the mechanism and freqency of this occurance is, and if it is observed in any other orbital systems we've discovered?

[Sisyphus]

I don't know about the first question, but is seems like any vector component perpendicular to the galactic plane would result in an endless sine wave-like (though I don't think actually sine wave) oscillation. The reason being that the collective mass of the galaxy would act like a giant "mass disk" that would gravitationally pull objects towards its plane. If I'm not mistaken the shape of the curve should be close to parabolic, since if the oscillation is small, the disk would act like an infinite plane, and hence pull would be constant irregardless of distance.

[[Tycho?]]

I have heard about the osscilation as well. Right now we are slightly above (or below) the galactic plane, not sure by how much though.

[Spyman]

I don't now any reson for the planes to be synchronized, when the systems form from clouds of matter they keep the momentum from the creation, which should be locally random. Most likely the planes are even rotating relative each other.

 

The current difference between our system and Milky Way is about 60 degrees.

 

The galactic disk has an estimated diameter of about 100,000 light-years. The distance from the Sun to the galactic center is estimated at between about 26,000 light-years and 35,000 light-years. It takes the solar system about 225-250 million years to complete one orbit.

 

The periodic oscillation of the solar system, back and forth across the plane of the Milky Way galaxy, is about once every 30 million to 35 million years. We are only about 20 light years above the equatorial symmetry plane of Milky Way and have "recently" passed through.

[Schrödinger's hat]

I just had this same (I think) question occur to me so rather than start a new thread I'll bump this one.

Rephrasing in case the answer to my question differs:

 

Is there any (and if so, how strong?) bias for the (approximate) plane of orbit/rotation of a solar system to lie along the plane of galactic rotation?