What would happen if the moon was destroyed?

I know there wouldn’t be any more tides, but what else?

Nobody knows but Cecil:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/001027.html

Well, I know a little bit too. Cecil covers the main stuff, but I’ll add that there is a webpage about this, written by Comins.

Also, there is the question of how to remove the Moon, which is an interesting problem all in itself. The energy involved is quite large.

Neil Comins also wrote a book called What If The Moon Didn’t Exist? . It’s out of print, but I found it in the $1 bin of Strand bookstore here in New York. It’s an interesting read, where he described different kinds of earths (no moon, tilted like Uranus, small black hole passing through earth, etc.)

Zev Steinhardt

Thanks for the link, Bad Astronomer. One question though, Comins explanation for the high tide on the side of Earth farthest from the moon seems to differ from the one your provide in your cleverly titled book, Bad Astronomy (available in stores now).

Specifically this paragraph:

“The high tide on the far side of the Earth occurs because these most distant oceans feel the least attraction to the Moon. In essence, they are left behind as the Moon pulls the other parts of Earth toward itself with greater force.”

In your book, you explain that it is caused by the Earths orbit around the barycentric point of the Earth/moon pair.

Am I misunderstanding the two explanations or is one correct?

The poets would be left with “June” and “spoon”.

I am amazed that this is such a frequently asked question, coming up on the boards again and again. Funny how so many people have this secret desire to destroy the moon.

At least we’re all concerned with weighty matters.

“Sir, are you suggesting we blow up the moon?”

“Would you miss it?”

:smiley:

Well, they’d still have “spittoon”.

Yeah, that works well in romantic poems:

and “lune” and “croon” and “soon” and “dune” and “goon” and “prune” and “flune”

Okay, so I made that last one up :smiley:

In this case, I’d guess Du Hast saw “The Time Machine” last night. Using nuclear bombs to build sublunar caves caused it to break up, showering the Earth with debris and destroying civilization. Uh huh. :rolleyes:

Well, actually it was the night before last. :slight_smile:

I’m not really sure what this means. A lot of people use arguments dealing with centrifugal foirce; the far side of the Earth feels more centrifugal force than the near side because it is farther from the barycenter. I believe (that is, I haven’t done the math) that this is the same as what I say in my book, but using a different frame of reference. It turns out this is complicated. :wink:

But again, the quotation you provide sounds odd, but I would need to read the context. I read the book some years ago, but it’s been long enough that I don’t remember the particulars.

I’m a little confused about the centrifugal-force argument. Doesn’t this imply that the high tide when the moon is down should be higher than the high tide when it is up? And would there be only one high tide (when the moon was down) if the barycenter were outside of the Earth?

The way I’ve heard it explained before, it’s a tidal force: a difference in gravitational force felt at different distances from the moon. The water closest to the moon feels a stronger force than the center of the earth, so it is accelerated more strongly; the water farthest from the moon feels a weaker force and so is accelerated less strongly. This predicts two nearly-equal tides wherever the barycenter is (as long as the moon is much more than an Earth-radius away).

I just wanted to add that cecil’s column on this is one of my all time favorites. It’s got one of the funniest letters ever written to unca cecil too.

That is precisely how I explain it on my own webpage about tides. Same way in my book too. :wink:

I have read that the moon acts like a counterweight to keep the Earth’s wobbling axis more or less stable. It has been theorized that without the moon life would not have evolved to any complexity because of the severe climate changes brought about by major axis changes. This is one of the arguments for the “Rare Earth” hypothesis.

Without the Moon, Earth would be rid of werewolves right?