On Apr 27, 7:09 pm, wrote:
Each planet is either orbiting away from the sun or towards it;
That is an oxymoron. You can't "orbit away" or "orbit toward"
anything.
it can't be perfectly balanced.. the earth is moving away from the sun. A planet can move in an orbit which with a radius that is slowly increasing or slowly decreasing. A planet can move in a circular orbit that is slowly becoming elliptical, or move in an elliptical orbit that is slowly becoming circular. However, "orbiting away" is nonsense since the orbit has to approximately follow a periodic path. It "can't be perfectly balanced" is another misrepresentation. What can't be perfectly balanced? The gravitational force all by itself can be perfectly balanced. The processes that I mentioned are disturbed by nongravitational forces.
The moon is moving away from the earth.. X centimeters per year.
Due to the frictional forces inside the earth. If gravity alone
were involved, and the earth couldn't deform, even the tidal force
couldn't slow this motion down. Much of the energy in the orbit is
depleted by the water that is deformed into tides. If the earth were
rock solid, all the way down, the motion away from the earth would be
much slower. If the earth were a completely rigid body, the motion
would be slower still. I think gravitational waves would leave the
motion at micromillimeters per second, but I don't know for sure.
Regardless of long term processes that remove energy from the
orbit (thus moving the planet farther), the earth travels in orbits
that are nearly circular or elliptical. Thus, the moon and planets are
moving apart on the scale of hundreds of millions of years.
The question really concerned short term processes. The
comparison to stones falling does not refer to millions of years, the
question concerned why it doesn't fall in our lifetimes. The answer is
that the moon does fall, quickly. However, it has an initial sideways
velocity. The sideways velocity plus the shape of the earth causes the
moon to keep missing.

Guessing, I'd say the solar system is moving away from Sagittarius A*.
( Sgr A* is at the center of the Milky Way )