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Astronomy

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    $\begingroup$ This doesn't address the aspect of how far an arbitrary pair of planets are from one another. This just states that if a star and planet are very close, the distance from anywhere to either the star or the planet is basically the same. The distance from Neptune to the Sun is nearly the same as from Neptune to Mercury, but that says nothing about how far it is from Neptune to anywhere else. $\endgroup$
    – Nuclear Hoagie
    Commented Nov 1, 2021 at 16:16
  • $\begingroup$ @NuclearHoagie I'll try to come up with how expand on this. Essentially, the average distance from one planet and another will be the average between when both planets are one the same side of the primary and when they are on the opposite sides. This average value will always be larger than the distance to the primary, and I believe that the farther from the primary the other planet is, the larger this value will be (regardless of where the initial planet is, relatively). I'll see if I can get some values in a spreadsheet and confirm this. $\endgroup$
    – Michael Richardson
    Commented Nov 1, 2021 at 18:58