Stellar Formation

I was wondering how stars and planets form.

I sent the following email to The Naked Scientist, Nature, Science Talk, and Science podcasts:

"Why is north north? I'm guessing it's arbitrary and that East is actually just a word for Spinward, while West is just a word for Anti-Spinward, and North is the right-hand rule pole, while South is what is left. I'm also guessing that North is shown as up simply because most writing and science/history was developed in the Northern Hemisphere.

"This simple question lead me to the following question: Do all planets spin the same direction, and does the solar system spin (the direction of planetary orbits) the same way the planets spin?

"Do solar systems spin the same direction & orientation of the way the galaxy spins?

"Do galaxy clusters align in a plane and spin in similar directions?

"Why does a disk always develop out of the stardust, regardless of the size of the body?"

Then I kept thinking about it. I can see what the answer could be.

Imagine a huge cloud of interstellar gas. It's following the laws of gravity and momentum. If you follow a single particle in the cloud imagine how it behaves. It is going to be attracted to the center of mass of the gas cloud. So it starts to fall toward the center. But the gas cloud is attracted to the center of the galaxy, so it's not just sitting there, it's moving, too. Since it's moving, it's center of mass is moving. So it's falling continuously toward a moving target.

It's in orbit.

So the masses swirl in orbit around the center of gravity. Eventually, masses actually start to come together and they form little local pockets of gravity that orbit the big center and other smaller bodies are attracted to them and fall into their orbits. So you see how it happens. Satellites swirl around planets, which swirl around stars and form solar systems that swirl around in galaxies.

I wonder if it really is that simple.