We Live in the Helical Solar System

For more than 40 years astronomers have known the planets do not revolve around the Sun in flat orbits, as they used to believe. One of nature's many optical illusions had misled them for hundreds of years. In the 1960s astronomers were studying the orbital motions of stars in other galaxies and realized the Sun must be moving in an orbit around the center of the Milky Way. This requires each planet in the Solar System to follow a helical (spiral) path as it orbits the Sun. In spite of that, however, the old flat-orbit concept, although obsolete, is apparently still being taught in our schools. For some reason, astronomers seem not to have made an effort to publicize the new helical structure for the Solar System. This book was written in the hope students, as well as the general public, can finally begin to learn the newfound understanding of how our Solar System has always operated. The text explains the new concept and is based on the information discovered by astronomers in the last half of the 20th century. There are nine chapters in the book. The first three explain how the new helical structure was discovered and what it means. The remaining chapters discuss how this new information might lead to a more accurate understanding of how orbiting systems operate throughout the Universe. These final six chapters offer some thoughts inspired by the new information.