For nearly 4.5 billion years of our solar system's history, the Earth has been alone and revolving around the sun. Our giant lunar companion is larger and much more massive than any other moons in comparison with the planets around which they revolve. In its full phase, the Moon shines brightly at night, and throughout its history it has been associated with phenomena such as craziness (or sleepwalking), animal behavior (howling at the moon), agriculture (full moon before the autumnal equinox) and even with women's menstrual cycles. … Its destruction would be a disaster, but it would also change our world forever in some incredibly interesting ways.
1) When the Moon is destroyed, its debris will fly towards the Earth, but this may not lead to the destruction of life. Imagine a weapon so deadly that it would be capable of gravitationally freeing the moon and tearing it apart. This will require a piece of antimatter the size of an average asteroid (about a kilometer in diameter), and then its parts will scatter in all directions. If the explosion is weak enough, the debris will form one or more moons; and if he is strong, then nothing will remain at all; and if it is of the correct strength, it will create a ring system around the Earth. Over time, these lunar fragments will go out of orbit thanks to the earth's atmosphere, and a series of collisions will occur.
However, these collisions will not be as destructive as in the case of asteroids or comets, which we fear so much today. While chunks of the moon may be massive, dense, and even possibly larger than the asteroids that destroyed the dinosaurs, they will nevertheless have much less energy. Asteroids or comets hitting the Earth move at a speed of 20, 50 or even more than 100 kilometers per second, while lunar debris will move at a speed of only 8 kilometers per second, and they will only tangentially enter our atmosphere. However, the lunar pieces falling to the Earth will have destructive force, but this force on collision will be only 1% of the total energy in a collision with a comparable size asteroid. And if the falling pieces are small enoughthen humanity can easily survive their impact.
2) The night sky will naturally be much brighter. After the Moon and all its remnants disappear, the second brightest object in the Earth's sky will completely cease to exist. Although the Sun is naturally 400,000 times brighter than the full moon at perigee, it is, in turn, 14,000 times brighter than the next brightest object in the sky, Venus. If you take the Bortle Dark-Sky Scale, then a full moon can take you from number 1 - the purest and most natural dark sky possible - right up to 7 or 8, eclipsing even the brightest stars. Without the Moon, there will be no hindrance to the clear, dark sky on any day of the year.
3) There will be no more eclipses. Whether we are talking about a solar eclipse - partial, total or annular - or about lunar eclipses when this natural satellite of the Earth falls into our shadow, in any case there will be no more eclipses. An eclipse requires the presence of three objects and their certain alignment - the sun, planet and moon of this planet. When the moon passes between the sun and a planet, a shadow can be cast on the planet's surface (total eclipse), the moon can cross the sun's surface (annular eclipse), or it can eclipse only part of the sunlight (partial eclipse). However, in the event that there is no moon at all, then nothing like this happens. Our natural satellite will never be able to fall into the shadow of the Earth if it does not exist, and thus the eclipses will be ended.
4) The length of the day will become constant. You may not have thought about it too much, but the Moon is a minor frictional force for the rotating Earth, and as a result, its rotation speed gradually decreases. We can lose only a second here or there over the course of many centuries, but they accumulate over time. Our modern 24-hour day was only 22 hours in the days of the dinosaurs and only 10 hours a few billion years ago. And in four million years, we will not add more days to our calendar, as the rotation rate will slow down and the length of the day will continue to increase. However, without the Moon, all this will stop. We will have a 24 hour day every day until the sun runs out of energy and goes out.
five) Our ebb and flow will be negligible. The ebb and flow are interesting, significant differences for those of us who live near the coast, especially in a bay, narrow bay, strait, or other places where water accumulates. The ebb and flow of the Earth is mainly due to the influence of the Moon, while the Sun has only a minor effect on the ebb and flow that we see today. During the full moon and new moon, when the Sun, Earth and Moon line up in a certain line, we have the largest, syzygy tide - this is the time of the largest possible difference between the level of high and low tide. When they are at right angles to each other during the quarter moon, we have the lowest water level - and this is the moment of least change. The syzygy tide is twice the lowest level, but without the Moon, the ebb and flow will be very small, and in magnitude they will be only a quarter of the current maximum level.
6)Our axial tilt will be unstable. This is an unpleasant thing. The Earth rotates on its axis with an inclination of 23.4 degrees with respect to our orbital plane of rotation around the Sun (this phenomenon is called tilt or obliquity). You might think that this has little to do with the Moon, but over tens of thousands of years, this tilt changes - from 22.1 degrees to 24.5 degrees. The moon is a stabilizing force, while worlds without large moons - like Mars, for example - experience tilt changes tens of times greater over time. On Earth, if there is no Moon, our deviation, according to existing estimates, will at times exceed 45 degrees, and this will make us a world that will revolve on our sides. It will always be cold at the poles, but not necessarily warm at the equator. Without the moon to stabilize our positionthe ice age will spread to different parts of our world every few thousand years.
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7) We will no longer have a convenient launch pad to fly to the rest of the universe. As far as can be judged, humanity is the only species that voluntarily entered the surface of other worlds. Part of what was done between 1969 and 1972 can be explained by the fact that the moon is so close to Earth. The distance is only 380 thousand kilometers, and the rocket can cover this path in about three days, and the flight to the Moon and back at the speed of light will take only 2.5 seconds. As for the next nearest objects - Mars and Venus - the flight to them will last for several months, the flight there and back - more than a year, and the communication signal will travel this distance for a large number of minutes.
The flight to the moon is the easiest "training trip" we could ask the universe for if our goal was to explore the rest of the solar system. Perhaps someday we will use it again, as well as all that it gives to the Earth - and this is not such a distant time.
Ethan Ziegel is an astrophysicist and writer and is also the founder and primary author of the Starts With a Bang blog.