If our moon were to crumble what impact would it have on the earth?

Question

I recently skimmed a story on Yahoo! front page on a theory that the moon may crumble and disengrate, if that happened what impact would it have on the earth? I know that the ocean's tides would be altered, then what? I am just curious. Serious or thoughtful answers only.

Answer 1

The moon has a very positive impact on the Earth. The moon keeps the earth from wobbling, thus making for predictable growing seasons. That means we have a bit of economic stabilty. Lose the moon, and the earth beings to tilt so that the N pole eventually is ponting alternatively at the sun and directly away from it, all predictability with respect to sunlight in any give spot is lost. Lose the sun, you will lose all life on the planet.

As to the moon crumblng, that's pretty unlikely. However the moon is receeding from the surface of the earth at about 1.5 inches per year. So it was 1538 miles closer when dinosaurs were wiped out.

As to a meteor shower if the moon breaks up, possible but not too likely since the moon is outside the Roche limit. Having some rings around the earth is more likely and eventually those junks that get inside the Roche limit fall to earth.

Answer 2

the way in which the moon crumbles would have a great influence on the outcome. if the the earth's moon were to just crumble (no explosion, etc), the earth would develop rings like Saturn. the ocean tides on earth would be greatly affected. because of the change in the tides, the weather (and climate) on earth would certainly change. the stability of the earth's orbit around the sun might be affected.

Answer 3

Several things would happen. The Earth would no longer have tides or eclipses. The particles from the moon would form a ring and several small satellites around the Earth. We would no longer have a moon.

Answer 4

The moon is to blame for the tides, that are the approach that helps save the currents interior the oceans flowing and prevents it from stagnating. specific species of plankton discover acquaintances and breed purely for the time of specific moon stages - those plankton are area of the backbone of the marine ecosystem. the sea's organic temperature ameliorations impression the climate varieties - in case you seem on the Bering Sea section, the climate there is various the nastiest interior the worldwide for the reason that's the place heat water from the tropics comes up and hits the chilly waters of the Arctic. that's additionally why hurricanes continually form over the sea and are in many circumstances constrained to the equatorial and sub-tropical/heat temperate factors of the worldwide. there is extra, even though all of it breaks right down to: the Moon is going away and undesirable issues take place right here in the worldwide.

Answer 5

This would happen when the Sun's photosphere was expanding. If the moon was pulled apart, the pieces would rain down on Earth. The Earth would wobble to a much larger extent on its axis.(...like the weebles, it would wobble but it wouldn't fall down.)

By stabilizing Earth's wobble, the moon stabilizes our climate, without which, life may not have even formed. But at the point of the moon's disintegration, there will be no life on Earth anyway.

Answer 6

Probably armageddon. That's a lot of rock up there, and not all of it would stay within the rings. Much of it would rain down on the quivring, squealing humans as they pray to their false idols for percieved sins, squishing their pious corpses into little red splotches on the planet's surface. The resulting dust and impact fragments and even the rings still orbiting would block much of the sunlight from the earth and we would reach another ice age.

Through it all though, I suspect that our technology is such that a handful of humans would survive and evolve over the years into diminutive hairless little bunker dwellers and mutant cannibals, like HG Wells' Time Machine.

Answer 7

The earth would have rings, the International space station would be slowly ripped to pieces and space craft would have to plan an elaborate new strategy to lift off from the earth without having several rocks tear them up as they went into space.

Answer 8

If it broke into a bunch of little pieces, we would have one heck of a meteor shower and then a lot of moon dust floating around. The tides would no longer exist, and we would have no more eclipses.

Answer 9

Some pieces would crumble, but so many others would crash to our surface that it would throw ash into the atmosphere and block the sun therefore putting us in another ice age.

Answer 10

Nothing will happen ...Probably you will miss to see the moon at night.