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I have a small ball with lots of magnets embedded in it with all the north poles facing out and I have a big sphere with lots magnets embeded in it with all the south poles facing out. I set the experiment up in space and throw the ball.

Could I get the ball to orbit the sphere just from the magnetic attraction?

A simular question goes for placing the ball inside the sphere, could an orbit form from magnetic repulsion?

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    $\begingroup$ Notice in the idealized limit where there are many small magnetics unformly spaced on the sphere or ball, there will be no magnetic field produced by either and thus no interaction force between the two. $\endgroup$
    – Brian Moths
    Commented Dec 5, 2014 at 20:20
  • $\begingroup$ Jitter, it appears that you want to build magnetic fields with spherical symmetry. Gauss law forbids such fields. $\endgroup$
    – Energizer777
    Commented Nov 9, 2015 at 4:17

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Yes it is simple as planet orbit on gravity or magnetic filed. For example the Earth orbit the Sun bcz Sun have magnetic field and the Moon also orbit the Earth.

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    $\begingroup$ "the Earth orbit the Sun bcz Sun have magnetic field". Say what? $\endgroup$
    – Nephente
    Commented Jul 2, 2015 at 8:20
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    $\begingroup$ The magnetic fields of the Sun and Earth have a negligably small effect on their mutual orbit. The orbit is dominated by gravitational forces. $\endgroup$
    – John Rennie
    Commented Jul 2, 2015 at 9:56

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