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In Jim Carrey’s 2003 film “Bruce Almighty”, Carrey’s character suddenly acquires divine powers and uses those powers to lasso the full moon and bring it closer to Earth to woo his beloved. Later in the film, background shots show television reports of massive and unprecedented flooding in the world.
While the film is obviously fantastic, it does raise a question: what if the moon were twice as close to Earth as it is today?
In fact, the movie’s flood scenario is not far from what might happen if the moon were suddenly much closer to Earthsaid Neil Comins, a physicist at the University of Maine. The moon’s best-known effect is its gravitational pull on Earth’s oceans, which results in two high tides and two low tides each day.
But if the Moon were half the distance from Earth as it is now, the tides would be eight times higher, Comins told Live Science. Some islands would be completely underwater for much of the day and the populated coasts would likely become uninhabitable due to the high tides, he added.
Related: If you are on the Moon, does the Earth seem to go through phases?
But higher ocean tides wouldn’t be the only result of a closer moon. The moon also has a tidal effect on Earth Earth, said Comins.
If the moon were suddenly twice as close to Earth, the effect would be like hitting a gong with a mallet, Comins said: waves of energy would reverberate through the planet due to the sudden increase in force. of the moon’s gravitational pull.
And that sudden gravity shot “would actually impact the earth’s crust, meaning it could trigger more earthquake, could trigger more volcanic eruptions, ”said Jazmin Scarlett, historical and social volcanologist at Queen Mary University in London.
Take, for example, the moon of Jupiter I, the most volcanically active world in the solar system, said Scarlett. Io’s volcanism results from the push and pull of gravity from Jupiter and two of its other moons. Earth could experience a similar fate if the Moon were suddenly half as close.
With all of the sudden buckling of the planet’s crust, the Earth’s rotation would slow down over time. It’s because like the moon gravity pulls the oceans, the resulting friction between the ocean floor and the water slows the Earth’s rotation. Today, the Earth’s rotation slows down by about a thousandth of a second per century, Comins said. If the moon were half the distance, the Earth’s rotation would slow down even more, dragging out our days and nights.
If we survived sudden earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, longer days and nights, and higher tides, at least we would see more frequent solar eclipses. Because the moon would cover a larger area of the sky, it would be more likely to pass in front of the sun from our perspective, Comins said. We could even still see the solar corona (outer atmosphere) shining around the dark silhouette of the moon, but not so clearly, he added. Otherwise, the moon and its phases would look roughly the same, but larger in the sky.
What if the moon slowly spiraled towards Earth, rather than suddenly moving? The planet’s crust and tides would move more gradually, hopefully allowing life to adapt, Scarlett said. Longer days and nights could change our climate and cause evolutionary changes in several ways, Scarlett said. Animals should adjust to a brighter moon at night. For example, prey might need to learn to hide better at night, as predators might have more light when hunting.
While a Morgan Freeman with a superpower won’t be the cause of an Earth-Moon upheaval, could anything natural cause the Moon to drift closer to Earth?
This is wild speculation of course, but Comins decided on a response: “If a sufficiently massive object passed near the Earth-Moon system, and the Moon was in the right place in its orbit as this thing passed, this thing passed. thing could potentially take energy from the moon, and that would cause it to spiral closer to us, ”Comins said.
So it would take a massive asteroid passing through Earth at exactly the right place at the right time to eventually push the moon towards us like a ball circling a drain. Of course, even if that did happen, it would take the Moon many more years to move away half the current distance, so Earth wouldn’t feel the effects right away.
Originally posted on Live Science.
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