Moon blown up = destroyed earth?

[deleted]

they deleted pages 4-1xx on this forum, but this has been 'debated' ad nauseum.

I know, that's not an answer, but the only answer that makes sense is that one musn't "question" logically nor scientifically the premises presented in movies.

just go with it, sit back, and enjoy ...

I don´t know ... It looked fantastic though. No doubt about that.

well first of all why do you think the mass of the moon remained? maybe not much remained.
secondly we do not really know how much influence the moon has on the biosphere itself.

A number of things in response:

There might be no life on Earth without the Moon or, if it did exist, it would be RADICALLY different from what we see today. It has done A LOT more than impact the tides. I won't go into the grim details because they are well detailed elsewhere and you can go and look them up if you're interested but:

1. The Moon was formed when a giant body crashed into the Earth. This had a number of effects, including changing the composition of the Earth. This change in composition was extremely important later in the forming of the various layers of the Earth. This and other effects were vital in the formation of life much later.

2. Afterwards the Moon helped to slow down the Earth's rotation. This is a different effect of the gravity of the Moon. If the Earth's rotation hadn't been slowed then it is unlikely that life would have formed and, if it did, thing would have been very different because the days would much shorter.

3. The Moon and it's gravity also helped to stabilise the 'wobble' of the Earth. This has a HUGE effect because it enabled the seasons to develop. Before the Moon existed the Earth's 'wobble' might have prevented life from forming, but it didn't life would be a lot different because, in combination with '2' above, the Moon basically stabilised the Earth enough to allow life as we know it. Without it life would unquestionably be radically different, if it existed at all. It's highly unlikely that humans - or intelligent life - would exist without the Moon because things like sewing crops and generally controlling the environment would be impossible on an Earth which had a severe 'wobble', no seasons, no tides, and an extremely quick rotation.

4. I think you are underestimating the importance of the tides. Once again I won't go into the grim details because they are available elsewhere, written by people who understand this much better than me, but the tides have had an enormous impact on things like land formation, the evolution of life in the ocean, life in the ocean moving onto land, the formation of fossil fuels. The list goes on and on and on.

5. As was noted by someone else above the Moon's gravity has also effected volcanoes, plate tectonics, and all sorts of other things.

Look ... I am not trying to argue with you, I am just suggesting that you go and have a look into it because a few years ago I discovered ho important the Moon was, and is, to life - and everything else - on Earth as we know it.

Now then ... you may well argue that all of the above is irrelevant to whether or not destroying the Moon now would destroy life on Earth. To this I reply:

1. I can't remember exactly what the Tom Cruise character said about what happened when the Moon was destroyed but you have to keep in mind that he is a clone who has been given a false story. We don't know what REALLY happened do we? For example he is told that there are radiation zones - because "we used the nukes" - but that turns out to be untrue. I'm just suggesting that the destruction of the Moon would certainly have an impact on us, the ocean, and our use of it, and that coupled with an alien invasion that would be enough for us to end up losing the way we did. It's possible that the alien is lying to him about the full effects that the destruction of the Moon had. In other words what he is told is not necessarily what happened and therefore what they say happened doesn't necessarily have to be feasible or true?

2. As per the above the tides are extremely important to a number of things, including the existence of life in the oceans and our 'farming' of them. A change in the Moon's gravity and a change to the tides would have drastic effects.

3. I don't think you're quite right about all the mass still being in roughly the same place and therefore not affecting the tides so much. All the little chunks of the Moon need to be together for the full gravitational effect to occur.

3. The gravity and the change to the tides would be continually changing because the chunks of the Moon would be unstable. There is one very large section of the Moon still and it would be having a gravitational effect on all the other chunks. If would be slowly 'sucking' them in and growing in mass and that would be changing the gravitational effect constantly.

4. We can see the Moon has been blown apart but we don't know what else has happened. For example if the orbit of the Moon has changed then that will have an enormous effect on tides and other things - as per all of the above - because the gravitational effect will be changed drastically.

I guess in the end I am saying that the Moon was extremely important to the evolution of life on Earth, that it continues to be very important to us in our day to day lives and existence, that a change to it would have drastic effects, that we don't know EXACTLY what changes were made when the Moon was destroyed in the movie so we don't know EXACTLY what the effects would be, but we can say that the changes, coupled with an alien invasion, could certainly be enough for us to end up the way we did in the movie. I think what is shown in the movie can be believed without having to completely suspend disbelief, especially when you consider that the story we are told is not necessarily exactly what happened; it is a story implanted in the clone's mind to explain the situation he is in and it isn't completely accurate because we know, for example, that the nukes weren't used after all. It's reasonable to assume that there are probably other inaccuracies in the story too...

That's my two cents worth anyway!

:-)

We're from the planet Duplon. We are here to destroy you.

many chunks of the Moon may have landed on the earth or in the oceans causing huge 500'+ tidal waves

You are not supposed to analyze too much about these kind of movies. If everyone were like you and questioned everything that doesn't seem hundred percent logical, we wouldn't have any interesting sci-fi movies at all. Long live imagination and free thinking! Death to the realists.

If an explosion shattered moon like presented in the movie, there'll surely be some big shards of moon blown out of orbit, and eventually, fall onto the surface of earth and cause big problems. Remember the Tunguska event? It's allegedly caused by a asteroid exploding in the sky. The energy of that event is about the combination of 300 atomic bombs. Imagine what would happen if part of moon fall off.

One thing for sure is that there won't be a shattered moon floating in the sky: parts of the moon will either come down or fall back to a sphere.