From google: On average, Mercury is the closest planet to Earth. Although Venus comes closer to Earth at times, the smaller and faster orbit of Mercury keeps it on average closer to Earth than Venus or any other planet.
2 weeks ago | 41
At first you would think Venus. But on second thought. If you imagine Mercury & Venus in orbit on the other side of the Sun opposite the Earth. It would indeed be Mercury. That's a clever thought experiment. My astronomy teacher in college did the same thing with his students and the Moon's shadow.
2 weeks ago | 19
Mercury no? cause ceres is a dwarven planet in the asteroid belt, and while Venus is the closest on its closest possible position, it usually isn't very close to it all the time, same thing with mars. and because mercury has an incredibly short orbit period of 88 days, it can almost always be as close as possible to the earth while the others would spend large amounts of time far away from the earth.
2 weeks ago | 10
I estimated for average distance of the orbit not average distance of the planet. The question would be asked like this if we were supposed to find the orbit. Which planet’s orbit is, on average, closest to Earth’s orbit?
2 weeks ago (edited) | 3
Easy because of average. Sun is closest on average to Earth, one of these is basically the same as the sun
2 weeks ago | 4
For some reason I thought we were talking about the size of the planets over their local
1 week ago | 1
On average mercury. As it's the closest to the sun it isnt hurt as bad when the planets are on the opposite side of the sun
2 weeks ago | 2
Ceres??? Really Brian? Very clever misdirection from the actual trick question. 😂
2 weeks ago | 2
Fun fact: mercury is on average the closest planet to earth AND all of the other planets individually, as well as of course to the sun
2 weeks ago | 1
On average, all the planets are in the centre of the sun. So it kind of depends what definition you're using for average.
2 weeks ago | 1
Dr Brian Keating
Which planet is, on average, closest to the earth?
2 weeks ago | [YT] | 165