"Oh, did you see that?"
"Oh my god."
Is it a meteor shower?
Space debris?
No, it's something much, much worse.
Our nearest neighbor
is a full Moon no more.
The Moon exploded and splintered
into millions of fragments.
Enormous lunar rocks
are hurtling toward Earth.
This is WHAT IF, and here's what would happen
if the Moon exploded.
Okay, so how on Earth did the Moon blow up?
A blast mining operation gone wrong?
A nuclear blast?
A collision with a rogue planet?
Whatever caused this catastrophe,
you'd have to be packing
some serious firepower to blow up the Moon.
"Guns, lots of guns."
The largest nuclear bomb ever built,
the Tsar Bomba,
had the energy of over 57 million tons of TNT.
Think that's strong enough?
It's just a drop in the ocean
compared to the amount of force
you'd need to blow up the Moon.
You'd need the power
of over 600 billion Tsar Bombas
to destroy the Moon.
With anything less than that,
the Moon would just crack into pieces
and its gravity would
pull it back together again.
But if someone,
or something
managed to explode the Moon,
it would spell bad news for us.
The Moon debris would scatter
across the Solar System.
Some into the abyss of outer space,
and some headed straight for Earth.
Earth's gravitational pull would
immediately start to attract the Moon rocks.
As the Moon's remains start to pick up speed,
they would come crashing down
into the atmosphere.
Luckily, most of the smaller debris
would burn up before it reaches us.
Any larger pieces that got through
would be traveling much slower
than a similar-sized asteroid.
The damage they'd cause
wouldn't amount to much.
But, is it just me,
or is it getting a little hot in here?
The Moon chunks aren't causing much damage.
But the endless barrage of debris
on our atmosphere would
start to heat up the Earth.
The whole world would start to get hotter,
and hotter,
eventually getting to the point
of incinerating all life.
Talk about a bad way to go.
Oh, and if you're thinking about
trying to evacuate Earth,
you better do it as soon as possible.
The Moon debris,
combined with all the satellites
it would destroy in space,
would make any trip out
nearly impossible.
But what if you did manage
to "get out of Dodge,"
or hunker down in the
deepest parts of the Earth?
What would life be like in the aftermath?
Well, for some of us,
it wouldn't get any cooler.
The Moon helps stabilize the Earth's axial tilt.
It's what gives us seasons.
With a new tilt,
some parts of the Earth
could be constantly exposed to the Sun.
In the worst case,
the polar regions could start rapidly melting,
raising sea levels,
and drowning out parts of the world.
As the debris settles,
the skies could look a little different.
The remaining Moon rock
might cluster around the Earth
forming a giant ring, like Saturn.
But don't stop and stare too long,
every once in a while,
some of the debris could
rain down onto the Earth.
Over billions of years,
the Moon's gravitational pull
slowed down the Earth's rotation,
giving us our 24 hour days.
Without the Moon,
the Earth would start to rotate
faster and faster.
We'd have shorter days,
and stronger winds.
Birds and insects would
have a tough time surviving the harsh winds.
Not only that,
ocean tides would start to die down
into tiny little waves.
The Moon's gravity
helps create tides on Earth.
Bummed out that you can't
rip some gnarly waves anymore?
Well dude,
there will be a much bigger problem.
It would wipe out all of the
sea creatures that rely on the
tides and ocean currents for survival.
Our whole world would be
literally flipped upside down.
The Earth would burn up,
our days would be shorter,
and the Moon wouldn't be there
to light up the night sky.
Now that we know how devastating
it would be if the Moon exploded,
what if instead of having no Moon,
we had two?
Well, that's a story for another WHAT IF.