On Jessie Waters’s show on Fox New this evening, they were interviewing idiots in New York revealing profound stupidity. One question posed to a New Yorker was, “What is the closest planet to Earth?” The random subject answered the question correctly saying “Venus.” The interview declared her mistaken and that Mars is closer which of course is wrong. Fox not the New Yorker was in error.
Actually while Venus measured in miles is closest, it depends on how you calculate distance. If you measure distance in terms of orbital positions, the closest planet to Earth is actually Mercury. Miraculously when considering the orbits of all planets, Mercury is also the closest planet to all other planets in the solar system as well. How can that be? Well, it is, because much of the time the orbits of planets place them on the other side of the sun, so if you compute the time interval and distance, Mercury which orbits the sun more than four times in an Earth year, is closer to all other planets for greater duration than any other planet. Ergo, there is more than one way to measure proximity.