To find how much closer Mercury is to the sun compared to Neptune, we need to subtract the distance of Mercury from the distance of Neptune:
- Distance of Neptune: \( 4.5 \times 10^9 \) kilometers
- Distance of Mercury: \( 5.79 \times 10^7 \) kilometers
Now let's perform the subtraction:
\[ \text{Distance difference} = \text{Distance of Neptune} - \text{Distance of Mercury} \]
First, we need to express both distances in the same scientific notation order. We can express \( 4.5 \times 10^9 \) as:
\[ 4.5 \times 10^9 = 4.5 \times 10^9 \text{ km} \]
And we will convert \( 5.79 \times 10^7 \) kilometers to a similar power of ten for easy subtraction:
\[ 5.79 \times 10^7 = 0.0579 \times 10^9 \text{ km} \]
Now we can perform the subtraction of the two distances:
\[ 4.5 \times 10^9 - 0.0579 \times 10^9 = (4.5 - 0.0579) \times 10^9 = 4.4421 \times 10^9 \text{ km} \]
Thus, Mercury is approximately \( 4.4421 \times 10^9 \) kilometers closer to the sun than Neptune.
To express this final answer in proper scientific notation, we can round \( 4.4421 \) to \( 4.44 \):
\[ \text{Mercury is } 4.44 \times 10^9 \text{ kilometers closer to the sun than Neptune.} \]
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