A controversial study changes the identity of the planet closest to the Earth!

Venus is ranked as the closest planet to Earth, but it could lose this feature due to the findings of a controversial new study.

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Researchers at the University of Alabama have found that Mercury is closer to Earth than Venus.

"Using a mathematical method that we invented, we concluded that the closest neighbor of the Earth is actually Mercury," said Professor Tom Stuckman's researchers in an article in Physics Today.

The distances between the planets are usually estimated based on the distance between the planet and the sun, but the team points out that this is not really accurate.

The Earth is at an astronomical unit of the Sun, Venus at 0.72 astronomical unit, and if you subtract, the distance between the Earth and Venus is 0.28 astronomical unit, when the Venus is at the nearest place to the Earth, A pair of planets.

But three researchers realized that this was not the exact way to calculate the interplanetary distances, because the planets would be at their greatest distance when Venus would be on the other side of the sun against the Earth, 1.72 astronomical units .

The researchers simulated on the basis of this hypothesis and discovered that Mercury is closest to the planet Venus.

Source: mirror