>> “Wait a minute. Isn’t The Earth coplanar with almost all of the bodies in the solar system?” <<
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No, but the sun is.
The planetary orbits are all perturbed. There is a theory that at one time Mars crossed Earth’s orbit in a near miss trajectory. (has support in folk lore)
Wow. wouldn’t want to be around when Mars did a crunchy with the Earth. wonder what the kinetic energy release would be for something like that.