Astronomy:Destruction of the Moon

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Short description: Hypothetical global catastrophe scenario
See also: Disrupted planet

The destruction of the Moon is a hypothetical global catastrophe scenario explored in fiction[1] and, informally, by scientists.

Analysis

Completely destroying the Moon to avoid the debris reassembling into a satellite would require an amount of energy larger than the Moon gravitational binding energy, estimated to be 1.2 × 1029 J.[2][3][4] This equals a bit less than 600 billion 50-megaton nuclear bombs, such as the Tsar Bomba,[5][4][2][6] roughly equivalent to the full energy output by the Sun in six minutes.[4] For comparison, the impact that created the South Pole-Aitken basin, the largest lunar impact structure, had an energy of roughly 4 × 1026 J, 300 times smaller.[7] Bringing the Moon's orbit within the Roche limit of Earth (within about 18,000 km (11,000 mi)) would also destroy it.[3]

Without the Moon, tides would still happen—the Sun's gravity also causes tides—but they would be substantially reduced,[8] a quarter of the size of the current spring tide.[9] The sudden disappearance of the Moon however could release water pressure and create large potentially catastrophic waves around the oceans.[8] The reduction of tides could have profound negative consequences on coastal ecosystems.[10] Tides also help to drive ocean currents; without the Moon, weather extremes and major weather events would be more common.[10]

In 1993 numerical simulations suggested that the Moon is necessary to keep the Earth's axial tilt stable. Without the Moon the axial tilt of Earth could therefore oscillate chaotically from 0° to 45° on the scale of tens of thousands of years, possibly reaching 85° on timescales of several million years,[11] with severe climatic consequences.[9][4][6] More recent studies however suggested that, even without the Moon, Earth's axial tilt could be relatively stable on the scale of hundreds of millions of years.[12] Without the Moon, neither solar nor lunar eclipses would exist.[9]

Violent destruction of the Moon would likely bring substantial debris to impact Earth. Such debris would be slower, and thus each debris fragment have only about 1% of the kinetic energy with respect to an asteroid of the same size, therefore their impact would be less destructive.[9] However, their sheer quantity could lead nonetheless to substantial atmospheric heating, possibly leading to extinction of life on Earth.[4][6] The mathematician and Usenet personality Alexander Abian proposed that the destruction of the Moon would stabilize seasons and eliminate natural disasters from Earth.[13] Apart from being practically unfeasible,[5] Abian's claims have no scientific basis— destroying the moon would actually cause natural disasters.[8]

Destruction of other moons

Natural satellites can and do get destroyed. The rings of Saturn possibly originated from the destruction of a former moon, called Chrysalis.[14] The capture of Triton by Neptune possibly destroyed some of the previous moons of Neptune, by crashing them on Neptune or Triton itself.[15][16] In turn, tidal interactions also cause Triton's orbit, which is already closer to Neptune than the Moon is to Earth, to gradually decay further; predictions are that 3.6 billion years from now, Triton will pass within Neptune's Roche limit and be destroyed.[17] The Mars moon Phobos is expected to meet a similar fate.[18] Phobos gets closer to Mars by about 2 cm per year, and it is predicted that within 30 to 50 million years it will either collide with the planet or break up into a planetary ring.[19] Outside the Solar System, exomoons might collide with planets, removing life from them. [20]

See also

  • Moon in science fiction

References

  1. ↑ Davis, Lauren (23 September 2012). "Who destroyed the Moon best?". Gizmodo. https://gizmodo.com/who-destroyed-the-moon-best-30778064. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Ward, Cassidy (5 December 2023). "IF THE MOON DISAPPEARED, WHAT WOULD IT MEAN FOR EARTH?". SyFy. https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/if-the-moon-were-destroyed-what-would-it-mean-for-earth. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Cain, Fraser (17 July 2015). "How could we destroy the moon?". Phys.org. https://phys.org/news/2015-07-moon.html. 
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Paoletta, Rae (10 July 2017). "What Would Happen If We Blew Up the Moon?". https://gizmodo.com/what-would-happen-if-we-blew-up-the-moon-1796725643. 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Helman, Christopher (26 November 2012). "U.S. Planned Cold War Mission To Blow Up The Moon? Is That Even Possible?". Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2012/11/26/u-s-planned-cold-war-mission-to-blow-up-the-moon-is-that-even-possible/. 
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 "What would happen if we blew up the Moon?". https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/what-would-happen-if-we-blew-up-the-moon. 
  7. ↑ Potter, R.W.K.; Collins, G.S.; Kiefer, W.S.; McGovern, P.J.; Kring, D.A. (2012). "Constraining the size of the South Pole-Aitken basin impact". Icarus 220 (2): 730–743. doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2012.05.032. Bibcode: 2012Icar..220..730P. 
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Turney, Drew (19 April 2023). "A Brief History of the Ludicrous (And Misguided) Plots to Blow Up the Moon". Popular Mechanics. https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/moon-mars/a43633761/blowing-up-the-moon/. 
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 Siegel, Ethan (2 March 2017). "7 Ways Earth Would Change If Our Moon Were Destroyed". Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/03/02/7-ways-earth-would-change-if-our-moon-were-destroyed/. 
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 McFall-Johnsen, Morgan (7 May 2018). "What would happen if the moon suddenly disappeared?". Popular Science. https://www.popsci.com/what-would-happen-if-moon-suddenly-disappeared/. 
  11. ↑ Laskar, J.; Robutel, P. (1993). "The chaotic obliquity of the planets". Nature 361 (6413): 608–612. doi:10.1038/361608a0. Bibcode: 1993Natur.361..608L. 
  12. ↑ Lissauer, Jack J.; Barnes, Jason W.; Chambers, John E. (2012). "Obliquity variations of a moonless Earth". Icarus 217 (1): 77–87. doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2011.10.013. Bibcode: 2012Icar..217...77L. 
  13. ↑ "YIKES!: GOODNIGHT, MOON Shoot the moon? Hell, says Prof. Alexander Abian, why not just blow it up?;". People. 1991-06-24. https://people.com/archive/goodnight-moon-vol-35-no-24/. 
  14. ↑ Beckwith, Walter (19 September 2022). "Destruction of Saturn's Former Moon May Explain Planet's Tilt and Young Rings". AAAS. https://www.aaas.org/news/destruction-saturns-former-moon-may-explain-planets-tilt-and-young-rings. 
  15. ↑ Siegel, Ethan (27 August 2020). "How Neptune's Triton Destroyed Nearly All Of Its Moons". Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/08/27/how-neptunes-triton-destroyed-nearly-all-of-its-moons/. 
  16. ↑ Tillman, Nola Taylor (4 December 2017). "When Triton Crashed the Party at Neptune". Space.com. https://www.space.com/38959-when-triton-wrecked-neptune-moons.html. 
  17. ↑ Chyba, C. F.; Jankowski, D. G.; Nicholson, P. D. (July 1989). "Tidal evolution in the Neptune-Triton system". Astronomy and Astrophysics 219 (1–2): L23–L26. Bibcode: 1989A&A...219L..23C. 
  18. ↑ Zubritsky, Elizabeth (10 November 2015). "Mars' Moon Phobos is Slowly Falling Apart". NASA. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/phobos-is-falling-apart. 
  19. ↑ "NASA – Phobos". Solarsystem.nasa.gov. http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Mar_Phobos. 
  20. ↑ Hansen, Bradley M S. (2023). "Consequences of dynamically unstable moons in extrasolar systems". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 520: 761–772. doi:10.1093/mnras/stac2847. 



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