Does Earth really corkscrew through space?

An animation of the Solar System has been going viral again: the Sun streaks through space and the planets spiral behind it in long glowing coils. Its best-known version, DjSadhu’s 2012 “helical model”, has been watched more than nine million times, and a coded simulation posted on X on 2 November 2026 drew millions more views. So does Earth really corkscrew through space? Yes, but not the way those pictures show it.

▶ Try it yourself in Galactic Path Lab: slide from riding along with the Sun to the galaxy’s view, stretch the time from a month to a galactic year, and tilt the orbits.

Both pictures are right

A path is always measured against something. Ride along with the Sun and it stands still, so the planets simply go round it in near-circles: the textbook picture. But the Sun itself orbits the centre of the Milky Way at about 230 km/s, about 828,000 km/h, NASA says. Watch from the galaxy instead and each planet goes round a centre that keeps moving, so its circle is drawn out into a helix. Neither view is wrong; they are the same motion seen from two places.

Stretched almost straight

What the animations get wrong is the proportion. In one year Earth goes round the Sun once, a loop of about 940 million km covered at 29.8 km/s. In the same year the Sun carries it about 7.3 billion km, nearly eight times as far. So one turn of Earth’s coil is 7.3 billion km long and only 300 million km wide: 24 times longer than it is wide. Drawn to scale and seen from the side, a year of Earth’s path is a gentle wave. It only looks like a tight corkscrew when you view it almost end-on, or slow the Sun down, which is what most animations do.

Tilted, not trailing

The plane of the planets’ orbits is tilted about 60° to the plane of the Milky Way, and so about 60° to the Sun’s direction of travel. That tilt means the planets are not dragged behind the Sun like a comet’s tail or a vortex. Each one swings ahead of the Sun for half its orbit and behind it for the other half: Earth gets up to about 75 million km in front. Astronomers Rhys Taylor and Phil Plait made this point when the vortex animation first spread: the helix is real, the trailing is not. The Sun’s gravity simply carries the planets along.

One lap: about 230 million years

Over longer times the coils become too fine to see and all the planets ride along one thread, the Sun’s own path. A human lifetime of 80 years carries the Solar System about 580 billion km. One full lap of the galaxy, a galactic year, takes about 230 million years by NASA’s round figure; published estimates run from about 220 to 250 million. On the way round, Earth circles the Sun about 230 million times.

The tool and film use circular orbits, a circular galactic orbit and NASA’s round 230 km/s and 230 million years; the real Sun also bobs up and down through the disc, which the model leaves out, and the Sun and planets are drawn far larger than they are. The film uses short excerpts of DjSadhu’s animation (YouTube), morn1415’s corrected animation (YouTube) and the 2 November post by @PhilosophyOfPhy (X), credited on screen; the coils, the galaxy and the numbers are drawn from the model.

Sources: NASA StarChild, Does the Sun move around the Milky Way?; Live Science, How long is a galactic year?; Astronomy, In which direction does the Sun move through the Milky Way?; Universe Today, Is the Solar System really a vortex?; Phil Plait, Bad Astronomy, No, our Solar System is not a “vortex”.