The moon is likely a piece of the earth formed during the early molten period. It has similar geology to the earths lower lithosphere, but has little of the dense material that composes the core. It no longer has a molten core so if it were to be broken up, it would not anneal. It would become a debris belt in near earth orbit and due to the decreased mass would eventually spiral away.

Originally posted by cma
I know we have recorded meteroids hitting the moon, but what if it also effected the earth?

How, exactly would it do that?

The moon is small and light and far away. Anything that gets caught by the weak gravity of the moon and goes crashing into it won't get up and go staggering around the solar system after that. You can't play "cosmic pool" with the moon, because it's too fragile to withstand that (imagine playing pool with fresh chicken eggs. That's about what it would be like.)

In order for any planet or moon to change orbit, a large chunck from it has to be ejected and the planet or moon would move in the opposite direction the chunck, which was ejected, takes. But it will only change to a different orbit.

An object with enough mass to knock the moon or any planet form their present orbit would actually either break the planet/moon or would totally destroy it. If I remember correctly, only a new gravitational force entering the solar system, greater than the one which keeps the object in its orbit, would be able to change the planet/moon's orbit relative to the sun and not destroy or greatly damage the moon/planet (what would happen to what's in the planet its different...)

It would have to be something massive. I remember doing a paper on this for college about two years ago.


[Edited on 28-5-2004 by Muaddib]

Some food for thought.

Each revolution the moon takes around the earth, the moon moves father away. Expanding orbit, in time like several hundred thousand years the moon will spin around the earth and it will loose the gravitational pull from earth and spin off into space.

By the time this happens the moons gravitational effect will have lessened to a point of no tidal action and little or no effect on the planet.

And of course by the time all this happens, hopefully technology will be able to move the moon a desired orbit to benefit mankind.

That food is i bit inedible.

1) the annual distance the the moon receedes from the Earth is not a constant. The speed that it recessses has slowed down since the moon was first formed.

2) It took 4.5 billion years to get where it is now, it is not likely to go anywhere in a few hundred thousand years.