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Earth being the third planet far from the Sun, it was long believed that its nearest neighbors would be Venus or Mars, which occupy the second and third positions respectively. Although the situation changes frequently, NASA tells us "Venus is our closest neighbor", based on the closest approach to the Earth. However, three scientists have calculated that on average, Venus is not our closest neighbor as a whole.
Tom Stockman, Gabriel Monroe and Samuel Cordner published their findings in Physics Today, claiming that Mercury was actually closer.
The article, published on March 12, 2019, reads as follows: "It turns out that, by some phenomenon of carelessness, ambiguity or group thinking, the scientific popularizers have disseminated information based on an erroneous assumption about the average distance between the planets.
"Using a mathematical method that we have developed, we determine that, on average, the closest neighbor of the Earth is Mercury.
"Mercury is closer to the Earth on average than Venus because it revolves around the Sun.
"In addition, Mercury is the closest neighbor, on average, to each of the seven other planets in the solar system."
The trio then revealed how they had achieved this breakthrough.
"To calculate the average distance between two planets, NASA assumes that the orbits are coplanar and subtracts the average radius from the internal orbit of the average radius of the outer orbit.
"The distance between the Earth, 1 astronomical unit (AU) of the Sun and Venus (0.72 AU) reaches 0.28 AU.
"Although it is intuitive to think that the average distance between each point of two concentric ellipses would be the difference of their radii, this difference actually determines only the average distance of the points closest to the ellipses.
"Indeed, when Earth and Venus are at their closest approach, their separation is about 0.28 AU – no other planet is closer to the Earth."
Yesterday, it was revealed that NASA had spotted a hypersonic "cosmic cannonball" moving in space at nearly 700 miles per second.
It turned out to be a pulsar – a spinning, dense star left behind after a supernova exploded 10,000 years ago.
Named PSR J0002 + 6216, it was discovered using NASA's Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope and is currently traveling at a speed of 5 million kilometers at the time.
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