• Question: If something in space was to happen now, like some rock crashed into the moon, what would the effect be on our planet?

    Asked by Wurly135 to Scott on 6 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Scott Melville

      Scott Melville answered on 6 Nov 2017:

      Hmm, it’s hard to say – it depends a lot on exactly what happened.
      Smallish rocks crash into the Moon (and the Earth!) all the time, and we barely notice (statistically they land in the middle of the ocean).
      If a really big rock hit the Moon, we’d first need to worry about debris. If LOTS of little bits of rock/Moon spread out into our planet’s orbit, it would break a lot of our satellites. There are literally thousands of satellites up there, used for all kinds of things – from phones, to TV, to GPS – and they would all stop working if we lost our satellites to the evil space rocks.
      Moving the Moon around (say slightly closer or slightly farther away) actually has some weird consequences for things like the weather and the oceans. The Moon is pretty heavy, so as it flies around the Earth it drags the sea around with it (this is why we have tides). Monkeying around with the Moon would do some pretty strange things down on Earth, I think 🙂

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