Sun Group
“Is there other life outside the planet?”..a question that preoccupies many, who think about the possibility of the existence of other life outside the earth, and are there humans other than those who live among us, and are there other worlds that we do not know anything about, and is there another life in the nearest Planet Earth, but what many do not know is that the answer will be surprising, as the situation is constantly changing due to the movement of the planets’ rotation, and therefore the planet closest to Earth is also not fixed.
closest planet to earth
When answering a question nearest planet To Earth, the first thing that comes to your mind is Venus, the “Earth’s twin,” which is closest to the Earth, but the reality confirms that Mercury is the closest to us, according to Russia Today.
And the literature of the American space agency “NASA” indicates that Venus is indeed our closest neighbor, if we are talking about which planets are close to planet earth while revolving around the sun.
There is a common belief among a large number of people, that Venus, which is the second planet from the sun and one of Earth’s neighbors in the solar system, is the closest planet to our world, as the two planets are located within 25 million miles of each other approximately once every year and a half on Earth. Earth.
However, Mercury is the closest to the Sun, so it is the closest planet to Earth most of the time, because a large part of Venus’ orbit takes it very far from Earth.
At the farthest point from Earth, when the planets are on opposite sides of the sun, they are 160 million miles away, and since Mercury has the smallest orbit among all the planets of the solar system, and thus is closest to the sun most of the time, while Venus is located About 48 miles away.
Closest exoplanet
As for what is observed from distant worlds located outside our solar system, the so-called “external planets”, the closest known exoplanet to us, called Proxima Centauri b, where the planet orbits around an M-type star in the constellation Centaur, And that is only 4 light-years away, as its mass was estimated at 1.27 the mass of Earth, and it takes about 11.2 days to complete one orbit around its star.
Conditions on Proxima Centauri b are very harsh, even though the planet is located in the habitable zone of its star Proxima Centauri.
According to NASA: “Proxima Centauri b experiences bouts of intense ultraviolet rays hundreds of times more intense than the Earth does from the sun, and this radiation generates enough energy to strip not only lighter molecules such as hydrogen, but also, over time, heavy elements such as oxygen and nitrogen.” .
Closest habitable planet
According to what was reported by “Russia Today” channel, scientists discovered several years ago the existence of a habitable planet outside the solar system, and it is believed to be the closest planet to Earth, through the use of a reflecting telescope at the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
Many of the Earth-like planets were outside the solar system, but the problem is that they are located thousands of light years away, which in turn means that they are out of our reach.
Scientists also revealed the discovered planet, explaining that it orbits around the small-mass star Proxima Centauri, located 4.25 light-years away from the sun. A source at the European Observatory said: “This planet is considered the closest planet to Earth and is habitable, which means that it is possible to reach him during the present life.