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TL;DR it’s Mercury The article describes a novel mathematical formula for calculating the average distance between planets orbiting the same star. Using this m
by pimlottc 3y ago
TL;DR it’s Mercury
The article describes a novel mathematical formula for calculating the average distance between planets orbiting the same star. Using this method (and confirming with computer simulations), the authors determine that Mercury, not Venus, is the closest planet, on average, to Earth.
It’s actually the average closest for all the planets! However it does not really go into the orbital mechanics to offer any intuitive explanation of this surprising result.
- eimrine 3y agobecause other planets use to appear too far sometimes, as it has been shown by whirly-dirly simulation
- nordsieck 3y ago> However it does not really go into the orbital mechanics to offer any intuitive explanation of this surprising result. I think you just need geometry to get an intuitive explanation. 1. Draw the Sun and the orbits of Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. 2. Pick a point on Earth's orbit for where Earth is. 3. Draw a circle around Earth that intersects the Sun. 4. Draw a line, tangent to that circle, that intersects the Sun. A hypothetical planet that orbits the sun at 0 distance has half of its orbit in the circle and half of its orbit outside the circle. As planets get further from the sun, an increasing proportion of their orbit sits outside the circle.
- xmcqdpt2 3y agoThe "paper" looks like a science fair project to me (a very good one though!) They don't really come up with a new method of calculating the distance, more like an explanation that might be more intuitive to some. The average distance is pretty straightforward to calculate over all times using integration.