When scientists first began doing laser range finding with the laser mirrors left on the lunar surface by the Apollo astronauts, they soon began to note a slight change in distances. The moon is actually leaving the orbit of the Earth and one day will simply shrug off the gravitational pull of the Earth and become a solar roaming free agent. Most likely scenario is that it may well, eventually, become caught in the gravitational field of Jupiter, the solar system’s vast vacuum cleaner, and either become a Jovian satellite or be destroyed in a titanic collision. Another possibility is that it may stay in the same orbit as Earth and eventually catch it up and collide.
Last night (Feb 19th 2010), on Discovery tv, I watched a program which enforced that which I already knew. It showed us, in some quite spectacular graphics, that a Mars sized object hit the virgin Earth at approx 45 dgrees causing a mass ejection of material into surrounding space. Most of this coagulated together to form the Moon and the heavier iron elements fell back to Earth.
When the moon originally formed, it was 15 times nearer the Earth, therefore 15 times as large. Must have been some sight, moonrise!
Sci Fi addicts may well recall the UK Sci Fi sceries, Space 1999, in which the moon was blown clear of Earth by a nuclear accident. But, what that fictional series did not show was the effect this would have on Earth. The tides will cease for a start, when the seas level out, cities like New York and Rio would become uninhabitable as a 4 metre rise would occur.
The last time the Earth ‘wobbled’ was back when the Sahara was a lush, tropical giant forest. The result of that ‘wobble’ is as we see the Sahara now. The moonless Earth will experience wobbles of more severity. The Earth’s angle to the sun (23 deg) is maintained by the Moon, without this steadying effect, weather patterns would be severely more extreme and changes to the surface was more markedly differing in style. The Moon leaving would cause the Earth to become unstable and fluctuations occur. The polar caps could become the new equator for example! The northern hemisphere enjoys its ‘winter’ even though the Earth is actually nearest to the Sun, and vice versa due to this 23 degree angle. Which is why summers down under are notably hotter than our own, when the Earth is furthest from the Sun. Anyway, hopefully by this time, we may have actually evolved enough to have the ability and knowledge to ‘move house’?
