There is a quasi-mythical attribution of the term to Edmund Burke, which Jeffrey Archer summed up in his novel, The Fourth Estate : In May 1789, Louis XVI summoned to Versailles a full meeting of the Estate General. The First Estate consisted of three hundred clergy. The Second Estate, three hundred nobles. The Third Estate, six hundred commoners. Some years later, after the French Revolution, Edmund Burke, looking up at the Press Gallery of the House of Commons, said, 'Yonder sits the Fourth Estate, and they are more important than them all.'.
When Venus is on the far side of the Sun from Earth, it can be as far as 261 million kilometers away. That varies widely, depending on which part of the orbit the Earth and Venus is. At its closest - during an inferior conjunction - Venus is at a distance of about 41 million kilometers.
When two planets are on opposite sides of the Sun, and form a line with the Sun, then they are farthest away. For example, the planet Venus is about 42 million kilometers (26 million miles) from Earth at its closest point and about 258 million kilometers (160 million miles) away at its most distant point.o get the number in kilometers, multiply by the conversion above: 0.28 x 150 = 42 million kilometers. Another example: Jupiter is 5.2 AU from the Sun and Earth is 1 AU from the Sun. So the distance between Jupiter's orbit and Earth's orbit is 5.2 - 1 = 4.2 AU or 630 million kilometers.