What would happen if we blew up the Moon?

[Doublebase]

What would happen if we blew up the Moon? What would happen to the Earth? Just curious. Scientifically speaking.

 

[tucker01]

probably alot of chaos with the weather. The moon also has an impact on the tides.

 

[GFR]

Death, and lots of it

 

[maniclion]

Foreman would have nothing to howl at on those lonesome nights in the desert. And Tough Old Mange would have nothing to stare at from his backyard and think of his lover howling so many miles away.

 

[Vieope]

I thought about that a few weeks ago, I thought it was such an original thought. Then I watched an anime of 15 years ago and they tried to do that.

 

[DOMS]

Assuming that the moon didn't blow up all over the Earth ending life as we know it: pretty messed up.

A great many animals use the moon and the lunar cycle. They would loose that and we would likely see a mass extinction.

Plus, it would forever ruin the term "mooning."

 

[maniclion]

Ooklah the Moc would roam the lands with Thundarr.


By the way if you're ever in Hawaii try to get around to seeing Ooklah the Moc in concert.

 

[DOMS]

Ooklah the Moc would roam the lands with Thundarr.


By the way if you're ever in Hawaii try to get around to seeing Ooklah the Moc in concert.

Hell yes!

Now I just have to figure out how to blow up the moon...

 

[maniclion]

Once thought to be said by our Arnold: "If we get rid of the moon, women, whose menstrual cycles are governed by the moon, will not get (pre-menstrual syndrome). They will stop bitching and whining."

 

[DOMS]

.

 

[DOMS]

Once thought to be said by our Arnold: "If we get rid of the moon, women, whose menstrual cycles are governed by the moon, will not get (pre-menstrual syndrome). They will stop bitching and whining."

Or it will never shut off.

 

[GFR]

If the moon didn't exist

This Friday is the full moon. Most of us appreciate the beauty of the full moon which has driven men to poetic ventures and romantic emotions. But what if the moon did not exist? As you gaze at the full moon this week, try to imagine how things might be different with no moon orbiting our planet.


Besides the obvious; no moonlit walks, no "Moon River" and no Apollo Moon landings (one small step for a man would have been a much bigger one,) there are some other important differences which would affect our lives tremendously.

Many calendars were based on the 29 day cycle of the moon, in fact, the ancestral form of the word month, is moonth! Today, the Islamic and a few other calendars are still based on the moon. Christians calculate the date of Easter by the full moon. Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox. The Chinese date their new year according the moon. Without the moon's cycle we might have ended up with a very different way of keeping track of time.

Imagine -- no solar or lunar eclipses. -and this would have changed our early views of the shape of the Earth. During a lunar eclipse the curved shadow of our planet can be seen moving across the face of the moon, giving away the round shape of the Earth.

Many of our vocabulary words are "moon oriented." The words "honeymoon" "'lunatic" "moon madness" and "moonflower" would not exist. And try to imagine us without the showy social pastime of "mooning!"

Also, Earth would spin much faster without its orbiting moon. That's because the moon's gravity pulls on Earth's oceans. The moon is largely responsible for the tides. The pull of the moon, and ebb and flow of the tides, puts the brakes on Earth's daily rotation. Billions of years ago, Earth spun around on its axis much faster. At one time, the cycle of day and night was less than ten hours long. If we'd never had a moon, we'd still have a shorter day.

And, if Earth rotated faster, other effects would come into play. Wind patterns would likely be stronger and longer lived. Consider the giant planet Jupiter, which rotates in about ten hours. Hurricanes on Jupiter can be enormous and last for centuries. Wind patterns stretch across the entire planet, giving the Jupiter the banded appearance you can see if you look through a telescope.

A constant gale force wind on Earth would have affected earthly life and evolution. Imagine working, talking, just walking around against the howling winds. Imagine trying to navigate a ship at sea. Exploration would have been greatly affected (much to the pleasure of some native peoples no doubt!) It is even possible that some life forms might not even exist under such conditions.

 

[GFR]

Once thought to be said by our Arnold: "If we get rid of the moon, women, whose menstrual cycles are governed by the moon, will not get (pre-menstrual syndrome). They will stop bitching and whining."

Schwarzenegger Blows Up the Moon
Former congressman and current MSNBC political commentator Joe Scarborough has had to apologize for claiming that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wanted to blow up the moon. Scarborough had criticized Schwarzenegger for making the following remark:

"If we get rid of the moon, women, those menstrual cycles are governed by the moon, will not get (pre-menstrual syndrome). They will stop bitching and whining."

But although it's very believable that our Governor would have said something like that, in this case he was innocent. The remarks were actually made by a Schwarzenegger impersonator on the Howard Stern show.

 

[Tough Old Man]

Foreman would have nothing to howl at on those lonesome nights in the desert. And Tough Old Mange would have nothing to stare at from his backyard and think of his lover howling so many miles away.

GOOD THING DR. fOREMAN AND I LIKE YOU SO WE DON'T HAVE TO PAY YOU AN UGLY VISIT

 

[maniclion]

GOOD THING DR. fOREMAN AND I LIKE YOU SO WE DON'T HAVE TO PAY YOU AN UGLY VISIT

Any visit from the likes of you 2 is automatically deemed ugly by appearance alone.

 

[Triple Threat]

Tough Old Man throws a fastball down the middle and manic hits it out of the park.

 

[jasone]

Man, that would be a lot of cheese floating around. We would need more crackers.

 

[Rich46yo]

We would all die. The moon stabalizes earths orbit around the sun. Without it we would have vast, random seasonal changes and the earth would be incapable of sustaining life..........."this scientific fact brought to you by Uncle Rich"...........................

 

[gococksDJS]

We would all die. The moon stabalizes earths orbit around the sun. Without it we would have vast, random seasonal changes and the earth would be incapable of sustaining life..........."this scientific fact brought to you by Uncle Rich"...........................

Uncle Rich, please don't ever write a science book. The effect the moon has on the seasonal changes of the earth is almost negligible. The tilt of the earth's axis of rotation is 23.4 degrees offset of the axis directly perpendicular to the earths orbital plane, and the rotational axis is nearly fixed in space regardless of the earths distance from the sun. Due to the tilt of the axis and the hemispheres of earth, seasonal changes are dependent upon which hemisphere is tilted toward the sun (summer) and away from the sun (winter). Even the ellipses of the earths orbit around the sun does not have enough impact to cause a seasonal change by itself. The loss of the moon would not cause any sort of drastic seasonal change. Look up the term "precession" and it will explain that due to the gravitational torque of the sun and moon, the earths axis changes about a half degree per century. The tides would be altered, but not the seasonal change.

 

[Rich46yo]

Yeah...look I just saw a show on the science channel and a guy with about 97 PHDs said the moon stabalizes the tilt of the earths rotation. Without it the fucking planet would spin all over the place and we'd all die from massive climate changes.

But what would he fucking know? He only teaches cosmology and physics at Harvard, when science programs arent hounding him to appear.....................Uncle Rich

 

[GFR]

Post #12.....

 

[Pepper]

I have heard the earth would start to wobble and the seasons would get all screwed up.

 

[gococksDJS]

Yeah...look I just saw a show on the science channel and a guy with about 97 PHDs said the moon stabalizes the tilt of the earths rotation. Without it the fucking planet would spin all over the place and we'd all die from massive climate changes.

But what would he fucking know? He only teaches cosmology and physics at Harvard, when science programs arent hounding him to appear.....................Uncle Rich

Well Rich, do you think you could have heard wrong? Snack on this little tibit. An excerpt from the Cornell University Astronomy website. Important sections are in bold to help you better understand. Your mommy can tell you the meanings of the big words.

What would happen if the moon fell out of orbit with Earth completely. Specifically, how would that affect climate, geology, etc.?

Before I answer your question, you should understand that this will probably never happen. Only if a large object like Mars comes close to the Earth-Moon system is there any chance of an event like this happening.

If the Moon did escape from Earth, the main effect would be the lack of tides on Earth. Tides are caused by the differential gravitational force on the equatorial regions: i.e. the region closer to the Moon experiences more gravitational force than the region on Earth away from the Moon. This results in the formation of high and low tides on different regions of the Earth.

Other than tidal forces, there is no other geological or climatic influence of the Moon on Earth. There are issues like no more Moon to light up the night sky, no more solar eclipses, etc. but there will be no change in the geology or climate on Earth."


and this one is from a little unknown source called NASA

"The presence of the Moon stabilizes Earth's wobble. This has led to a much more stable climate over billions of years, which may have affected the course of the development and growth of life on Earth."

So, even though the moon helps stabalize the Earth's wobble, it's effect is felt over BILLIONS OF YEARS, and if your a little rusty with your math Rich, that's a very long time, people don't live to be a billion years old Rich, so I doubt losing the moon today would kill us all, unless you plan on living another 999,999,970 years or so. These don't explain the results of having no moon at all, but if the moon were suddenly gone. Summary "Without it the fucking planet would spin all over the place and we'd all die from massive climate changes" is incorrect.

http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=336

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Moon&Display=OverviewLong

 

[maniclion]

The particulars of the question are "what if we "blew up" the moon?" Blew up could mean cause to explode or cause to expand like a balloon. If we explode the moon fragments will surely come raining down on us causing some bad things. Now if we were to balloon the Moon that would be cool, blow it up like 5 times bigger so that when you get those horizon moons that look bigger it'll be so massive it'll make you shit your pants or at least scream Holy shit that's a big Moon.

 

[Eggs]

I think its hard for us to make a guess on what would happen, being that there are so many intricate things involved.

That said, it'd suck to not have the moon for late night swims, etc.

 

[jasone]

The particulars of the question are "what if we "blew up" the moon?" Blew up could mean cause to explode or cause to expand like a balloon. If we explode the moon fragments will surely come raining down on us causing some bad things. Now if we were to balloon the Moon that would be cool, blow it up like 5 times bigger so that when you get those horizon moons that look bigger it'll be so massive it'll make you shit your pants or at least scream Holy shit that's a big Moon.

A genius at work.

 

[Pepper]

Uncle Rich, please don't ever write a science book. The effect the moon has on the seasonal changes of the earth is almost negligible. The tilt of the earth's axis of rotation is 23.4 degrees offset of the axis directly perpendicular to the earths orbital plane, and the rotational axis is nearly fixed in space regardless of the earths distance from the sun. Due to the tilt of the axis and the hemispheres of earth, seasonal changes are dependent upon which hemisphere is tilted toward the sun (summer) and away from the sun (winter). Even the ellipses of the earths orbit around the sun does not have enough impact to cause a seasonal change by itself. The loss of the moon would not cause any sort of drastic seasonal change. Look up the term "precession" and it will explain that due to the gravitational torque of the sun and moon, the earths axis changes about a half degree per century. The tides would be altered, but not the seasonal change.

Rich is right dude. www.google.com

EDIT: Well, he is right that this is one theory about what would happen.

Orbital instability. This has been the most controversial area of all. At first my reaction was, what orbital instability? Everybody knows that the radius of the earth's orbit r = GM/v2, where G is the gravitational constant, M is the mass of the sun, and v is the earth's orbital velocity. In other words, orbital radius is independent of planetary mass, so despite the loss of 1/81 of the combined terralunar bulk, orbitwise the earth would rock on. Various individuals claim, though, that earth's orbit would become more elliptical, its axial tilt would become wobblier due to the influence of Jupiter, and who knows what else.

 

[The Monkey Man]

What would happen if we blew up the Moon? What would happen to the Earth? Just curious. Scientifically speaking.

Women would stop menstruating, and all of Mens problems would be solved!

 

[Pepper]

The most interesting part of the question seems to be "what would
happen if there wasn't a moon"... because the question of what would
happen to the "bits" would be very much like asking what happens if an
asteroid hits the earth (although if a large enough chunk of the moon
were to collide, I'm sure it could be pretty crazy - see my thoughts
on that below).

Forgetting the direct human impact for a while, the ecological effects
would be massive:

* Smaller tides
- would screw with marine life.
- would mess up the weather too (other factors would also cause
this).

* Faster rotation rate of the earth (with no moon to slow it down).
- would completely confuse plantlife and animal life... although I'm
sure it would adapt somehow.
- Faster winds (according to the nasa site). Sounds like that could
be pretty devastating.

* no moonlight
- will also confuse animals.

* More asteroid strikes (moon deflects some)

* Large deviations in the earth's orbit
- Must have some effect on the heat of the sun - could lead to
scorching heat or freezing cold.
- The tropics would no longer necessarily be the closest to the
sun... so climates could suddenly change.

I'd suspect that there is a large possibility that losing the moon
could cause pretty terminal ecological damage to the earth. It seems
that a lot of the weather stability that we enjoy comes from the
interaction of the atmosphere with the moon.

 

[Rich46yo]

First off the moon isnt small be any means. Its like 1/4 the size of earth right? So you think if it just dissapeared "best scenerio" the earth wouldnt experience a tilt on its axis? Even a slight tilt would be disastrous. Imagine if the equatorial rain forest belt all of a sudden experienced months of cooler weather that killed off its plant life. Or imagine if productive crop lands all of a sudden experienced hotter/dryer weather? Imagine NYNY with an average tempt of 90% year round?

And to make it worse there probably wouldnt even be any stability to that either. Since the earth would be under gravitational influence from other orbiting bodies in the solar system. As it is the moon is close enough, and large enough, to influence a stable spin. Without it we'd be fucked!............Rich