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What Would Happen If the Moon Crashed To Earth?
angkor writes: "What would happen if the Moon crashed into the Earth? We'd die. But there seem to be a lot of variables involved in answering this. I wonder if /.ers have any other ideas..."
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Well yeah, that's true, but that wasn't the question. It was a hypothetical question. "What Would Happen If the Moon Crashed To Earth?" So we are to assume that for whatever reason it will. It's neat to think about. I'd love to see a large scale computer simulation of this, but since it would have little practical value I doubt that it will get done for a very very long time.
Don't Bogart the fish sticks
(to get this @#*&% link to work, remove the space between the "s" and the "t" in "s teals")
What about Pluto and Charon? Aren't they closer in size to each other than Earth and the Moon?
Yes; check out Nine Planets (look at Earth, The Moon, Pluto and Charon). Here are the diameters:
__________ Diameter
Pluto _____ 2274 km
Charon ____ 1172 km
Earth ____ 12756 km
The Moon __ 3476 km
This is a diameter ratio of about 1/2 for Charon/Pluto and 1/4 for Moon/Earth.
The curent theory of moon formation is that when Earth has about 90% of it's current mass (~4.5 billion years ago, or 50ma after the start of the solar system), a planetoid about the size of mars hit at a glancing angle. This gave us an enhanced metal core (original core+core of the other planet), blasted enough rock vapour into space to create the moon, and melted the entire planet.
It's safe to say that if you were on the surface of the earth prior to this, watching the incoming planet, you'd probably need a change of underwear.
>It might get further away, but it will still be around when the Sun goes Nova and swallows it all anyhow.
Except the earth will probably not be swallowed when the sun goes off main sequence. It turns out that the astronomers who first suggested this neglected the fact that the sun will have radiated a significant portion of its mass as light during the billions of years left in its lifespan. As the sun loses its mass, the planets will gradually move further away from the sun, so the Earth will live to see the Sun become a white dwarf. Still, the Earth will be pretty toasty by that time, and will probably have lost its atmosphere to the solar wind long before that (once the Earth's core cools and we lose our magnetosphere.)