You may have often heard information that says Venus is the closest planet to Earth. Not wrong, but an article in Physics Today has another argument. The article revealed that the closest to Earth was not the Planet Venus.
Plot twist, the nearest planet to Earth is Planet Mercury!
To identify our closest neighbors, scientists affiliated with NASA, the Los Alamos National Observatory, and the U.S. Army Engineer Research Development Center created computer simulations to calculate the average distance of Earth with its three nearest planets (Mars, Venus, and Mercury) during a period of 10,000 years. This is because the way the planets are parallel during their orbits is different.
Models show that Earth spends more time closer to Mercury than Venus or Mars. That is, the Earth is indeed more familiar with Mercury, on average and not a factor in the order of the planets of the Sun.
"In other words, Mercury is closer to Earth, on average, than Venus because it orbits the Sun closer," the authors explain.
These results are based on a technique called the point-circle method (PCM). Basically, this is a mathematical equation that takes the orbits of two circular, concentric, and coplanar planets, and calculates the average distance between the two planets as they orbit the Sun.
"Mercury (average orbital radius of 0.39 AU), not Venus (average radius of 0.72 AU), is the closest planet to Earth on average," they explained. For the record, AU is an astronomical unit that is the distance between the Earth and the Sun. This was reported by IFL Science, Saturday (2/7/2022).
