Most of us study the order of the planets like this: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and (until 2006) Pluto. Are the closest planets to Earth Mars and Venus? Turns out that's not necessarily the case.
To identify Earth's closest neighbour, a group of scientists affiliated with NASA, the Los Alamos National Observatory, and the US Army's Engineer Research Development Center created a computer simulation to calculate Earth's average distance from its three closest planets (Mars, Venus, and Mercury) over a 10-year period. thousand years.
Because of the way the planets align during their respective orbits, mapping models show that Earth spends more time closer to Mercury than Venus or Mars.
"In other words, Mercury is closer to Earth, on average, than Venus because it orbits the Sun more closely," the authors explain.
Indeed, it wasn't just Earth. Further calculations showed that the seven planets in the Solar System (minus Mercury) spend most of their orbits closer to the "Winged Messenger" than any other planet.
The results are based on a technique called the point-circle method (PCM) basically, a Mathematical equation that takes the orbits of two planets as circular, concentric, and coplanar, and calculates the average distance between the two planets as they orbit the Sun.
"From the PCM, we noticed that the distance between two orbiting bodies was minimum when the inner orbits were at a minimum," the authors explain.
This observation yields what we call a whirly-dirly corollary (the name is taken from an episode of the Rick and Morty cartoon), for two bodies with coplanar, concentric circular orbits, the average distance between the two bodies decreasing as the orbital radius in reduce.
"It is clear from this corollary, and from the table, that Mercury (0.39 AU mean orbital radius), not Venus (0.72 AU mean radius), is the closest planet to Earth on average," they wrote.
For information, AU stands for Astronomical Unit or astronomical unit for the distance between the Earth and the Sun.
To test their hypothesis, the researchers built computer simulations that tracked the positions of the four planets over a period of 10,000 years and calculated the average distance between them.
This simulation result differs from the traditional calculation (determined by subtracting the mean radius of the inner orbit from the average radius of the outer orbit) by 300%. However, it is different from the PCM calculation which is relatively insignificant at 1%.
It was found that the average distance between Earth and Venus was 1.136 AU (0.28 in the "old method"). For comparison, the average distance between Earth and Mercury is 1.039 AU (0.61 in the "old method").
This hypothesis has not yet been submitted to a peer-reviewed paper and will be put through thorough cross-examination by experts in the field. But the authors have noted several possible uses of their newly created PCM equation.
"With the right assumptions, PCM may be able to be used to obtain a quick estimate of the mean distance between assemblages of orbiting bodies," write the authors.
"This may be useful for estimating satellite communications relays on the fly, whose signal strength decreases with the square of the distance. However, at least we know now that Venus is not our nearest neighbor, and Mercury belongs to everyone," they concluded.