: I just learned that mercury is in fact the closest planet to the earth. What is this madness and since when?
In: 3690
You haven’t just learned it if you don’t understand.
Mercury is the closest to the sun. The sun is always the same distance to us. Mars is sometimes quite close to us, sometimes on the other side of the sun, which is very far. It spends most time further from us than the sun is.
Same goes with Venus, but to a lesser degree, as it’s a lot less far when it’s on the far side.
Same goes with Mercury, but to an even lesser degree, and it averages out as the closest.
Like I mentioned in my previous msg, the title is incorrect. Mercury is not the closest planet to Earth. Mercury is the closest on avg. it’s a huge distinction.
In total distance, Venus gets the closest to Earth when their orbits align.
It’s closest to Earth *on average*. It is also closest to every other planet *on average*. This is because its closest to the sun and has both the smallest orbit, and as a direct consequence, the fastest one. This means it doesn’t move very far away even if it’s on the other side of the sun, and it comes back around multiple times while the Earth completes one. Meanwhile planets like Mars and Jupiter will be on the opposite side of the sun for six months every year, even if their orbital ring is closer (Jupiter’s isn’t).
It’s not the closest planet to earth. It’s *most often* the closest planet to earth.
All planets revolve around the sun:
> (S) . . M . . V . . E . . M . . J . . S . . U . . N . . P
But they are practically never in a neat line up like this. Some are on the other side, some are “up” or “down” or somewhere in between.
So let’s look at the other extreme (for earth):
> E . . _ . . _ . . (S) . . M . . V . . _ . . M . . J . . S . . U . . N . . P
So seen from Earth:
* Mercury is anywhere between 2 planets away up to 4 planets away
* Venus is anywhere from 1 planet to 5 planets away
* Mars is anywhere from 1 planet to 7 planets away
* Jupiter is anywhere from 2 planets to 8 planets away
* etc.
*this is a* ***huge*** *simplification. The distances between the planet’s orbits are very different and not regular but for the explanation it doesn’t matter.*
So while Venus and Mars *can* be closer to Earth than Mercury, they can also be *much further* away than Mercury. This works out that most of the time Mercury is closer to Earth than Mars or Venus.
Funnily enough this is true for all other planets as well. Mercury is also usually the closest planet to Venus, Mars, … even Neptun or Pluto.
A planet’s year is how long it takes to go around the sun. Earth’s year is 365 and a bit earth days long, while Mercury’s is about 88 earth days and Venus’s is about 225 days. This means that after an earth year, Mercury & Earth will be back at their starting position, while Venus is about half way around the sun, putting Mercury much closer to Earth than Venus.
Ok, so all the planets orbit around the sun independently on different paths and at different speeds. Because of this each planet complete a an orbit at different rates. For the sake of a relevant time, I will use “earth days” to describe the orbit time, Mercury takes 87.97 days, Venus is 224.7 days, the earth is 365.26, and Mars is a 686.69 days.
So if Mars and Venus are on the opposite side of the sun and than Mercury and Venus, Mercury could be the closes planet to the earth temporarily.
Now also note, that there outer “gas” planets orbits are so far from the inner “rocky” planets, that even when the brief moment when the Earth and Jupiter are aligned, it will not be closer to the earth than any of the outer planets.
Most planets are closest to Earth at some point in time.
Your statement is incorrect, Mercury is not the closest planet to Earth, it is the planet that is closest to Earth the most.
The reason how this works is because planets orbit the sun, Mercury is the closest planet to the sun, there is no trickery here, as all the planets orbit the sun, no other planet is closer at any point in time. As Mercury is the closest, it’s orbit is the shortest. In a given amount of time, out of all the planets, Mercury completes the highest number of orbits. This is the crucial part.
The distance between planets constantly changes between two distances, the closest distance, and the furthest distance. The furthest distance would be when the two planets are on the far side of the sun to each other. With the closest being when they are in the same side of the sun to each other.
Since Mercury revolves around the sun the quickest, as it has the shortest orbit, Mercury is on the same side of the sun to us much more frequently than any other planet. It is at its closest point a higher number of times than any other planet.
Every other planets orbit takes longer, and so all the other planets are only at the closest point to Earth for a shorter amount of time.
Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun.
At any given time, the closest planet to Earth will depend on where the planets are in their orbits. If Mars or Venus is on the other side of the Sun from Earth, then that’s actually a pretty huge distance (very roughly twice the distance from Earth to the Sun) even though Earth’s orbit is between the orbits of Venus and Mars.
However, because Mercury orbits close to the Sun, the distance from Earth to Mercury is always around the distance from Earth to the Sun.
How does circle get pregnant?
Mercury is actually the closest planet to any other planet at any given time. This is based off of averages and not actually being the closest always.
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