Thread by @chronicleflask

One of my favourite science "facts" is that, by diameter, you can fit the other planets into the gap between the Earth and the Moon.

An argument recently broke out on Facebook about the truth of this, which led me to Check The Numbers.

Ready?
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The Moon isn't always the same distance from the Earth. Its nearest point is called the perigee, furthest is the apogee.

The distance between the Earth and the Moon is 356,500 km at the perigee, and 406,700 km at the apogee.

The time-averaged distance is 385,000 km.
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But.
Those distances are from centre to centre. So, we should subtract half the diameter of the Earth (6378 km) and half the diameter of the Moon (1738 km). That's 8116 km. So:

Perigee: 348,385 km
Apogee: 398,585 km
Time-averaged: 376,885 km
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Diameters of the other planets in km:
Mercury 4879
Venus 12,104
Mars 6792
Jupiter 142,984
Saturn 120,536
Uranus 51,118
Neptune 49,528

Total: 38,7941

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So, if we want to be super-super-mega precise:

You can fit all the other planets into the gap between the Earth & Moon *some of the time*

The point being that it's probably a lot closer than you thought, based on all the not-to-scale diagrams like this one you've seen...
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Data from:
nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/fact…
and
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_dis…
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@threadreaderapp unroll please