Venus is known as our closest planetary sibling but a new theory may throw that idea on its head; apparently Mercury is actually the nearest neighbor of every planet in the solar system.

The researchers behind the startling new theory say that decades of dodgy science and “groupthink” have left us with a completely inaccurate understanding of the solar system.

To be clear, the order in which the planets orbit the Sun is the same – Mercury still catches the most rays as it is, astronomically speaking, right beside the sun and Venus still has the closest orbit to Earth.

However, using a new method of calculating the average distance between two planetary bodies, a group of engineers from Los Alamos National Observatory, the US Army’s Engineer Research Development Center, and NASA now believe that, on average at least, Mercury is closer to us than Venus.

“By some phenomenon of carelessness, ambiguity, or groupthink, science popularizers have disseminated information based on a flawed assumption about the average distance between planets,” write engineers Tom Stockman, Gabriel Monroe, and Samuel Cordner in a commentary published in Physics Today.

The current methodology used to calculate distance between planetary bodies involves their relative distance from the sun, measured in Astronomical Units (AU). The Earth is exactly one AU from the Sun, Venus hangs out at 0.722 AU and Mercury at 0.387 AU.

However, confusion in terms of our proximity to our neighbours arises because we all orbit at different speeds, and thus spend different amounts of time on the other side of the sun from each other, which means that Mercury is often, again on average, much closer to us than Venus.

This is where the “point-circle method” comes in. The PCM equation calculates the average distance between two planetary bodies in concentric, coplanar (on the same plane), circular orbits, to account for all of the variations between the planets’ trajectories.

Curiously, this means that in addition to Earth, Mercury is actually closer to all the other planets, including outliers like Neptune and even dwarf planet Pluto.

The team’s findings and new approach have yet to be peer-reviewed but, if corroborated, may prove to be as stunning a revelation as the new finding that the moon is actually within Earth’s atmosphere.

Once peer reviewed properly, if proven correct, the PCM could assist in quick calculations of distances between any set of orbiting bodies from artificial satellites to distant planets and moons.

“In any case, at least we know now that Venus is not our closest neighbour – and that Mercury is everybody’s,” stated the authors.

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