Which planets are closest to the Earth ?!

News Now Dubai – United Arab Emirates (Follow Up)

Many of us still believe that Venus is the planet closest to the Earth, taking the average distance between other planets and the planet, according to the website "Physics Today".

In addition, many sites on the Internet divide the distance between each planet in the solar system, which shows that Venus is the closest planet to the Earth according to the average distance.

The time has come to change the information. All this prior knowledge has become a mistake.

Even NASA literature says that "Venus is our closest neighbor". This is true if we are talking about planets approaching the Earth while circling the Sun, but not if we want to know, you are closer to the average distance.

Researchers at the University of Alabama claim that the planet Mercury is the closest planet to the Earth and not Venus, according to the general average.

"If they take the distance and divide it over time, the closest planet to Earth is Mercury," said Tom Stuckman, a research team led by Tom Stokman.
The distance between the planets was generally calculated at a distance from the sun.

However, the team suggested that this was not true because it is based on the average distance of the planet as it circulates around the sun.

They explained that when the Earth and Venus are at the closest distance to each other, what separates them does not exceed 0.28 astronomical unit, the unit measured after the sun's planet and equal to the average after the earth of the sun.

But the planets are often the farthest from each other, where Venus and the Earth are generally opposite, that is, they are on either side of the Sun, so their distance is about 1.72 astronomical unit.

Instead of this method of calculation, the researchers simulated on two hypotheses, the orbits of the planets are semi-circular and these orbits are not related to a relative angle between them.

After simulations and approximations, the planets closest to Earth were Mercury, not Venus.

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