# What Would Happen If The Moon Exploded? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 27, 1999, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-the-moon-exploded/5593 "1999-12-27T01:39:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Persephone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecc23a/32.png) [@Persephone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Persephone)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 1999, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-the-moon-exploded/5593/1 "1999-12-27T01:39:00Z")
There’s a Sutter Home wine commercial with a newscaster in the background, and he says that the moon has exploded. This got me to thinking about what would happen if our moon really did explode. Would we just go on, moonless, or would it be not only the end of the moon, but the end of us as well? Sorry if this has been asked before. I did try the search engine, but everything listed was titled “What with the clock?” ---
**Author:** ![fuzzy-wuzzy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b38774/32.png) [@fuzzy-wuzzy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fuzzy-wuzzy)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 1999, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-the-moon-exploded/5593/2 "1999-12-27T01:50:00Z")
There would be damn cheese everywhere… ---
**Author:** ![Boris\_B](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/fbc32d/32.png) [@Boris\_B](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boris_B)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 1999, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-the-moon-exploded/5593/3 "1999-12-27T01:54:00Z")
Let me posit a description of the moon exploding, so we’re all reading of the same post: Some heinous internal or external catastrophe (say, getting hit by a fast-moving asteroid0 causes the moon to shatter into many chunks, which fly off in all directions. Under this description, we’re toast. The moon is close enough to the earth that, even considering the random effects of getting smashed into pieces, a huge mass of moonrock would hit earth’s atmosphere. It might only be a small portion of the moon’s mass, but it wouldn’t matter, since only a small percentage of the moon’s mass would be enough to mess up the atmosphere - burning up most of the oxygen and/or covering the sun with dust. It probably wouldn’t make a big physical dent, but us earth people need to breathe, and we need solar-powered vegetation to survive as well. If the moon were to explode in a less dramatic fashion, like say, breaking up into a few large, ponderous chunks, we might be okay. The big chunks of moon would have the same total gravity as they did before getting broken up; they would fall back together in a big gravitational jumble. If only a few medium-sized meteors hit earth, we’d pull through okay. So I guess the answer is, it depends. * * * - Boris B, Hellacious Ornithologist ---
**Author:** ![aha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/eada6e/32.png) [@aha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aha)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 1999, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-the-moon-exploded/5593/4 "1999-12-27T02:54:00Z")
Well everything that the moon affects,…would be changed forever. The ocean tides halloween, werewolves, vampires,the harvest,spooning, moonlighting,sailing by the light of the silvery moon, lunar moths, lunatics…ok ok I done. I am not sure what the results of those changes would be…not good I am afraid. * * * Of course that’s just my opinion I could be wrong. Dennis Miller ---
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 1999, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-the-moon-exploded/5593/5 "1999-12-27T16:43:00Z")
Tanget alert: Let’s say that something caused the moon to break into… oh for convenience’ sake let’s say Two Parts. How long would it take for those two halves to become spherical again? * * * – Teeming Millions: [http://fathom.org/teemingmillions](http://fathom.org/teemingmillions) “Meat flaps, yellow!” - DrainBead, naked co-ed Twister chat O p a l C a t [www.opalcat.com](http://www.opalcat.com) ---
**Author:** ![funneefarmer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/9fc348/32.png) [@funneefarmer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/funneefarmer)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 1999, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-the-moon-exploded/5593/6 "1999-12-27T20:04:00Z")
They wouldn’t necessarily fall back into each other to reform as a sphere. Couldn’t they end up with the curved faces toward each other ? ---
**Author:** ![Boris\_B](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/fbc32d/32.png) [@Boris\_B](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boris_B)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 1999, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-the-moon-exploded/5593/7 "1999-12-27T20:39:00Z")
> [@](#): > > They wouldn’t necessarily fall back into each other to reform as a sphere. Couldn’t they end up with the curved faces toward each other ? They could, but this would put tremendous gravitational stress on the hemispheres. If you were to take mountain, and turn it upside down, it wouldn’t remain on its peak for too long. All the material around it would fall to the ground, in a large, mountain-shaped heap. Even if two hemispheres were to be joined “flat-to-flat”, they might not fit together quite right. This would create huge overhangs at the equator, on two sides of the moon. Even if the fit was only wrong by a few percent, the overhang would be miles and miles of vertical rock. Temporarily. Suddenly I’m worried that I’m not describing this very well… Imagine you slice a ball of play-doh perfectly in half. Then you join the two halves together in a random fashion (this simulates the initial re-impact of moon chunks). You’re not quite done - you still have to simulate gravity. So you push each part toward the center of mass. If the moon was _really_ strong, it could maintain the new random shape; but, as Opal implies, I think the moon’s material would just not be strong enough. So you’d have a roughly spherical jumble of rock, which would probably get more spherical as volcanic forces reasserted themselves. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 1999, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-the-moon-exploded/5593/8 "1999-12-27T21:22:00Z")
But how about this: Our current model on how the moon formed was as the result of a catastophic cueballing of earth by some object early in the formation of the solar system. Something hit us so hard, that it knocked a huge chunk of us into outer space where it became the moon. Now, what if something similar happened to the moon? What if something hit it, and knocked a big chunk of it into outer space where it “reformed” into a satellite _around the moon_. Wouldn’t that be cool? Don’t know if the laws of physics would allow it. Earths gravity might be too strong to let something like that happen, but it would be neat to look at all the same. As long as it had happened in the same time frame as the moon’s formation. I wouldn’t care to see it happen now. ---
**Author:** ![douglips](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@douglips](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/douglips)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 1999, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-the-moon-exploded/5593/9 "1999-12-28T01:39:00Z")
Why you should read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by [Douglas Adams](http://www.douglasadams.com/): > [@](#): > > Excerpt from Life, the Universe, and Everything > > The ultra-famous sciento-magician Effrafax of Wug once bet his life that, given a year, he could render the great megamountain Magramal entirely invisible. > > Having spent most of the year jiggling around with immense Lux-O-Valves and Refracto-Nullifiers and Spectrum-Bypass-O-Matics, he realized, with nine hours to go, that he wasn’t going to make it. > > So, he and his friends, and his friends’ friends, and his friends’ friends’ friends, and his friends’ friends’ friends’ friends, and some rather less good friends of theirs who happened to own a major stellar trucking company, put in what now is widely recognized as being the hardest night’s work in history, and, sure enough, on the following day, Magramal was no longer visible. Effrafax lost his bet - and therefore his life - simply because some pedantic adjudicating official noticed (a) that when walking around the area that Magramal ought to be he didn’t trip over or break his nose on anything, and (b) a suspicious-looking extra moon. Sorry, but all this talk of upside down mountains and chunks of moon made me do it. \This is an excerpt and therefore OK with the copyright police? Someone please let me know if this is not OK.\ ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 1999, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-the-moon-exploded/5593/10 "1999-12-28T05:30:00Z")
Ummm, probably earthquakes due to the release from tidal stresses. I seem to recall that the Earth has an equatorial bulge because of the pull of the moon. What I’m wondering is whether there’d be any change in climate. Does reflected moonlight make any noticeable contribution to solar heating?