Someone replaced our Moon
with a disco ball.
You know, no matter how bright it seems,
the Moon doesn’t produce
any light of its own.
Instead, it gets its shine reflecting about
10% of the incoming sunlight that hits it.
And thanks to the uneven surface of the Moon,
that light
is reflected at many different angles.
If we made the Moon more like a disco ball,
we could change the way it reflects light entirely.
Disco balls cast dazzling beams of light
all over a room.
They do that
thanks to their many mirrored tiles.
Now imagine a disco ball the size of our Moon
in our night sky.
Would it spark an amazing rave back on Earth?
Or would it literally ignite fires?
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OK, where would you even start?
Knocking the Moon out of its orbit
and placing a giant disco ball in its place
could be quite problematic.
So you could start with something a little less dramatic.
Like covering the Moon in mirror tiles.
A disco ball has a radius of anywhere
between 10 to 183 cm (4 to 72 in).
The Moon, however, is bigger.
Much bigger.
It has a radius of about 1,700 km (1,080 mi).
Making a disco ball that large
would require covering the Moon’s surface
with over 3,000 mirror tiles.
And those wouldn't be your average
dressing room mirrors.
These massive tiles would range in size
from 100 to 150 km (62 to 93 mi) across.
You'd have to create those giant mirrors on Earth
and then deliver them all the way to the Moon.
It would take you at least three days to get them there,
and it's going to take a few round trips.
So it might be a good idea to ask NASA
or maybe the SpaceX team
to help out with robotic lunar missions
while you'd be preparing for the party of your lifetime.
OK, now that all the mirror panels are in place,
Wait, where did the Moon go?
As anticlimactic as it sounds,
once you turned the Moon into our Solar System's own disco ball,
you wouldn't see much from Earth.
The Moon reflects so much sunlight
because the lunar surface is so uneven.
This makes light bounce off in a chaotic manner.
The sunlight hits the Moon at one angle
and then is scattered at different angles.
But now that the disco Moon would have a very even surface,
the sunlight would get reflected
at the same angle it came in.
You'd have to try very hard to see this
new variety of reflected moonlight from Earth.
"What is that?"
Now you'd need to find yourself
at the exact angle of the reflection.
"Is anyone else seeing this?"
"That's it."
Based on the locations of the Earth,
Sun and Moon,
these reflections would only hit the Earth
every few months.
What you’d witness would be more like
an extremely brief flash of light in the sky.
Not quite the funky global ambiance
you had in mind.
OK, well, maybe you could take things up a notch
with a little creative engineering.
Yeah, instead of flat mirror tiles,
you could use curved mirrors.
These would reflect
all the incoming light into one point.
This would certainly increase the likelihood of the reflected light
reaching you back on Earth.
But it would come at a pretty grave cost.
All that energy concentrated into a single point
could create a sunbeam strong enough
that it would cause havoc wherever it hits.
This could turn the Moon into a Death Star-like device of destruction.
Except, in this case,
multiple beams of light
would wander over different parts of the planet.
Anything in their paths would ignite in flames,
leaving behind nothing
but patches of scarred Earth.
It's the same effect
as if you concentrated sunlight
with a magnifying glass,
only about a million times worse.
Now, if the Moon were no longer tidally locked,
there would at least be the upside
of having reflections that could move
fast enough across the Earth’s surface
to avoid igniting everything.
Now, despite the chaos of hyper-blazing sunbeams,
you’d be lucky that
the mirrors don’t reflect an enormous amount of UV radiation toward Earth.
Enough that it may burn you to a crisp.
Maybe the trick to getting the party started
would be to supply the disco ball Moon
with some artificial light from here on Earth.
For this,
you could try beaming lasers at the Moon.
Sure, this light could reach the Moon.
But the odds of being able to see any of it reflected back to Earth
would be slim to none.
As the laser beam traveled through Earth’s atmosphere,
photons would scatter in many directions.
The chance that photons of light launched from Earth
would reach one of the Moon’s reflector panels
would only be 1 in 25 million.
And then those photons
would need to make the uninterrupted journey
back through our atmosphere.
The probability of that happening would be
an even more dismal 1 in 250 million.
Now that you’re desperate for something to impress people with,
you’d go to your last-ditch effort.
Wrapping the entire Moon in aluminum foil.
If you managed to do this smoothly,
you could make the Moon
around eight times brighter than it is today.
I mean, It still may not have the dazzling effect
you were hoping for from the get-go.
But if you crinkled that aluminum foil up a bit,
you could get a few small reflective glints
like bouncing off a glass or a watch.
We're sorry that the party really never kicked off the way you wanted it to.
But if you really managed
to cover the Moon in mirrors,
you’d at least be treated to a truly stunning sight.
It would almost be like
catching sight of a second Earth in our own Solar System.
But that’s a story for another WHAT IF.