Did you know that Mercury is actually the Earth’s nearest neighbor, not Venus? Wow.
Venus is Not the Earth’s Nearest Neighbor
Based on the order of planets, Mercury is closest to the sun while Venus and Mars are the Earth’s next-door neighbors.
Venus has long been considered our nearest neighbor. But did you know that Mercury is actually nearer to us than any other planet, for most of the time?
For decades, centuries perhaps, Venus has long been named as the Earth’s nearest neighbor. After all, a plot of the planets’ orbit around the sun clearly shows that Venus has an orbit nearest to Earth, while Mercury’s orbit is closest to the sun.
There’s no question that when looking at their respective orbits, Venus has the nearest orbit to the Earth.
But scientists are now challenging this convention after making calculations and simulations that revealed something unexpected: Mercury spends more time near the Earth than Venus does. That’s all because of their orbits and how fast Mercury revolves around the sun.
A computer simulation built by engineers affiliated with the US Army’s Engineer Research Development Center and NASA, Los Alamos National Observatory, shows the Earth’s average proximity to its neighbors, Mars, Venus, and Mercury.
Due to their orbits and how fast or slow they move around the sun, the simulation determined that Mercury is actually the one that spends more time closest to the Earth than next-door neighbors Venus and Mars.
While their orbits remain neighbors, the simulation was able to calculate the average distance between Earth and Mercury as 1.039 AU or astronomical units (0.61 on the “old method”), whereas the new calculation for the average distance between Earth and Venus shows it to be at 1.136 astronomical units (0.28 on the “old method”).
They even tested the simulation for a period of 10,000 years – and got the same results.
Using the same model, they were also able to test the other planets. What’s really surprising is that they discovered that Mercury is not just the Earth’s closest neighbor but also all the planet’s nearest neighbor!
This new calculation wouldn’t change a thing about how the planets move in our solar system. But this could soon mean at science books might have to be rewritten.
So, what’s the use of these new data?
“With the right assumptions, PCM could possibly be used to get a quick estimate of the average distance between any set of orbiting bodies,” the researchers wrote.
“Perhaps it can be useful for quickly estimating satellite communication relays, for which signal strength falls off with the square of distance. In any case, at least we know now that Venus is not our closest neighbor – and that Mercury is everybody’s.”
Here’s the video:
