Which planet is closest to the Earth (and why the answer might surprise you) | Science and health

Those with good memories should remember: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Pluto, which was considered a planet, was "downgraded".

In the same clbad, we also learned that the planet is closer to Earth.

But it is not so simple.

Regardless of what you learned in your childhood, there is no single answer to this question because the distances between planets are changing.

In fact, although Mars and Venus are still represented as Earth 's neighbors – one on each side – none of them is sometimes the closest to our planet.

This was recently revealed by the BBC Radio 4 Plus or Minus radio program devoted to badyzing numbers and statistics of everyday life.

He was a listener for the program. He asked for clarification after watching a BBC TV show that said Mars was our closest neighbor.

"It's certainly a mistake," said Graham Sherman, convinced that the correct answer was Venus.

The truth is that each planet has a different orbit rate – the path of the planets around the Sun.

This means that the distances between them change.

To calculate which planet spends more time near the Earth, you need to calculate the average.

That's exactly what the More or Less program did, with the help of statistics expert Oliver Hawkins.

Hawkins was able to estimate which planet was closest to Earth every day in the last 50 years.

So he was able to calculate which planet was, on average, most of the time our closest neighbor.

The answer will surprise you …

"How is this possible?", You must ask yourself.

To explain, the BBC researched David A. Rothery, a professor of planetary geosciences at the Open University in the United Kingdom.

"The order of the planets, taken from the Sun, is the following: Mercury, Venus and the Earth, but when Venus is on the other side of the Sun, it is very far from us", Rothery explains.

The orbit of Venus creates this planet that can get closer to ours, followed by Mars in second position. Sometimes the red planet is very close to the Earth, whereas the distance separating Venus is enormous.

"And while Mars is potentially the second closest planet to our planet, the closest thing to Earth is Mercury," he confirmed.

Statistics prove it clearly: in the last fifty years, the smallest planet – and the closest to the Sun – was closest to Earth 46% of the time.

Venus appears in second place: she spent 36% of the time as our closest neighbor.

On the other hand, the red planet, which many badume to be closest to the Earth, was in this position only 18% of the time.

The confusion about the proximity of Mars may be related to the huge interest this planet has aroused in recent years among space agencies, especially NASA.

But why do we talk so many trips to Mars if Venus is at a shorter distance and Mercury ends up spending more time on our side?

The reason, according to Rothery, has nothing to do with the distances, but with the characteristics of each planet.

"Mars is a good place to live and its surface is not very hot and a spaceship could work for a long time," he said.

"On the other hand, if you land on Venus, it is very hot because the dense atmosphere retains heat."

Mercury, the next challenge

As for Mercury, it is more complicated. And it's not because it's the hottest (in fact, Venus is warmer, even if it's farther away from the sun).

"It is the most difficult planet to reach because when we go to Mercury, we get closer to the Sun and we gain speed … which complicates the access to your orbit", explains the expert.

Up to now, only two space missions have achieved this goal: Mariner 10 in 1974 and 1975 and NASA's 2004 Spacecraft – making Mercury the least explored planet in our solar system.

But Rothery is part of a group of experts looking for a third exploratory voyage in Mercury.

Last October, the European and Japanese space agencies jointly launched the third mission of the history of this planet: the BepiColombo, which must reach Mercury by 2025.

It is estimated that the satellite will take seven years to enter the orbit of Mercury, due to the acceleration issues mentioned by the expert.