Author: Frank Jacobs / Source: Big Think
- Earth is the third planet from the Sun, so our closest neighbour must be planet two of four, right?
- Wrong! Neither Venus nor Mars is the right answer.
- Three scientists ran the numbers. In this YouTube video, one of them explains why our nearest neighbour is… Mercury!
Did Musk pick the wrong planet to die on?
Image: upload.wikimedia.org
Elon Musk has said he wants to die on Mars.
By 2024, Elon Musk wants to land humans on Mars – the billionaire entrepreneur has said that he himself wants to go the the Red Planet, and even wants to die there. But has SpaceX chosen the wrong planet to colonise? If the plan was to pick the closest planet: yes indeed.
While Mars looms large in human culture and imagination, most scientific sources refer to Venus as the planet that’s the shortest distance away from Earth. NASA mentions Venus as our closest neighbour. But while it’s true that no other planet comes closer – the shortest approach is 0.28 AU (1) or 25 million miles (41 million km) – it’s not true that Venus is the closest planet (2) on average (even though that too is often erroneously asserted).
A faulty line-up of the solar system
Image: Wikipedia
A line-up of the usual suspects. Only the sizes are to scale, not the distances. And they usually don’t line up as nicely as this.
“As it turns out, by some phenomenon of carelessness,…
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