http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20090812/sc_space/newfoundplanetorbitsbackward Does that even make sense? I thought all planets travel in the same direction as their star's orbital path.
RR94, not sure what you mean by "star's orbital path." A star has an orbital path in a galaxy or local cluster, but I don't think that's what you mean. Every star spins, and the planets usually orbit in the same direction as the spin. It's pretty well accepted that's because the whole mess started as a big disk of dusk and sludge that slowly formed one big orb in the middle (the star) with some major clumps of material (planets, etc) running in ellipses around the central orb. So it barely makes sense to see one going the wrong way! Wacky. And if the accepted theories are correct, it would have to be something like a collision from an object outside that star's "solar system" to result in this wrong-way planet.
Interesting, but I would say no. Here's the basic part of orbital mechanics: If you choose a distance R from the star, then your required speed V is set. There are no choices, no matter the mass of the planet. It's surprising, but if you were orbitting the sun in Earth's orbit, you would have to have the same speed as Earth, and orbit once per year. So the point is, for this wrong way planet, for it to change direction, it would have to slow down somehow (maybe the pull of other "right way" planets) and then regain speed in the correct direction. But once it slows down, it will lose to the gravity of the star and get pulled toward its firey death in the star.
It will continue on it's merry way unless gravity from another body alters it's path. If it were to slow down, as would be necessary to reverse it's rotational direction... it would no longer have the velocity to counter the gravity of the star, and be sucked in.
