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 Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla
You fall to the Earth and perpetually miss.
This whole post is a valid view of orbits. It falls into the realm of the "orbits are the result of forces" descriptions. This is NOT the only theory, or even the most accurate. It is adequate, but putting it out there like it is the stone cold nuts of explanations might be misleading for some.
If we were describing the orbit of Mercury, we would need General Relativity. So GR is, strictly speaking, the most "correct" model. It predicts and explains gravitational lensing, black holes, and other observed phenomena, which the other theories do not.
Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla
Also, the Sun didn't catch the Earth.
This is another good point. I didn't mean to imply anything other than what is stated here.
The sun probably did catch Mercury, but likely it was a body that got flung toward the sun from the outer solar system, then interacted with something else when it was near its current orbit, which it then settled into.
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