Our nearest neighbour

[TwigtheWonderkid]

Just putting this out there, for some feedback. Heard someone ask that on average, what's our closest neighbour in the solar system. And apparently it's not Mars or Venus, but Mercury. If you take the distance between us and every other planet every day, and average it out, Mercury is the closest.

In fact, Mercury is the closest to all the planets, it you do the same maths. Pluto may be closer to Neptune some of the time, but when Pluto and Neptune are as far apart as they can be, they are obviously much further apart than Pluto and Mercury at their furthest point.

Sounds true. Is it? Any astronomers wish to comment.

[CrossMember]

Correct, Mercury is the closest on average over time. It makes sense if you think that half the time our neighbours (or any planet's neighbours) are on the other side of the sun, doing their orbits. As Mercury hugs the sun the closest, it's the nearest to everything else for the most amount of time.

[TwigtheWonderkid]

Cool quiz question.

[Simpo Two]

I was expecting this to be a dispute over a fence

[Gandahar]

It's the moon.

This is why questions have to be postulated correctly.

"Heard someone ask that on average, what's our closest neighbour in the solar system."

Is not a scientific question and open to interpretation.

Edited by Gandahar on Saturday 23 November 00:16

[thebraketester]

Blimey.... makes sense when you think about it but I would have never worked it out.

[Gandahar]

thebraketester said:

Blimey.... makes sense when you think about it but I would have never worked it out.

But you can see the moon is our closest neighbour every time you go out at night for most of the month.

And don't tell me you never spotted tides .......

[Simpo Two]

My closest neighbour in the solar system is about 50 feet away.

So yes, bad question with 'neighbour' undefined. You just assume it's a planet because it says 'solar system'.

[Gandahar]

Simpo Two said:

My closest neighbour in the solar system is about 50 feet away.

So yes, bad question with 'neighbour' undefined. You just assume it's a planet because it says 'solar system'.

Yep.

When you get to maths it's even worse, putting the equation in the wrong format can cause mayhem.

Even on social media

https://twitter.com/jik99k/status/1155598050959745...

That got up to mainstream media saying whether the answer was 1 or 16 and proponents of both sides saying they were right and the other side was wrong. "I did maths at university/ prison / Open University . so you are dumbo"

As it turned out a lot of people did not know how to apply the rules correctly on top of the written example they were all arguing over being so badly written it could not be decided by the correct rule set anyhow, as incorrectly parsed.

It's actually also a rehash of the same problem that cropped up a few years back as well !

[AshVX220]

Gandahar said:

Simpo Two said:

My closest neighbour in the solar system is about 50 feet away.

So yes, bad question with 'neighbour' undefined. You just assume it's a planet because it says 'solar system'.

Yep.

When you get to maths it's even worse, putting the equation in the wrong format can cause mayhem.

Even on social media

https://twitter.com/jik99k/status/1155598050959745...

That got up to mainstream media saying whether the answer was 1 or 16 and proponents of both sides saying they were right and the other side was wrong. "I did maths at university/ prison / Open University . so you are dumbo"

As it turned out a lot of people did not know how to apply the rules correctly on top of the written example they were all arguing over being so badly written it could not be decided by the correct rule set anyhow, as incorrectly parsed.

It's actually also a rehash of the same problem that cropped up a few years back as well !

So, for my on dumbass brain, are you saying that more info is needed and as it stands it can be either 1 or 16?