What if the Moon was split in half?

Just thinking about the moon and what would happen if it was split in half ^ | May 1, 2018

[SamAdams76]

If you simply flew up into space and sawed the moon in half with a giant hacksaw, most likely, nothing would happen. This is because gravitational force would hold the two halves together, sort of like a couple of magnets.

But what if you were able to get a couple of giant crowbars and put a person on the other side and then count to 3 and totally separate the two halves of the moon?

With enough strength applied, you could theoretically push the two halves far enough apart where the gravitational force no longer pulls them together and now the two halves start drifting apart.

This is where the fun begins.

It would be a pretty awesome sight from planet Earth, that I can tell you. Now if you left them in the same orbit (around the Earth), they'd eventually meet up with each other so you would have to find a way to push them into different orbits - maybe if you put a bunch of thruster rockets on one of the halves...I'm just thinking out loud here. I'm sure others will have better ideas.

So in essence, if we are going to successfully split the moon apart, we will need to apply enough delta V to one half of it to put it into a drastically different orbit. No mean task!

Here on Earth, in addition to the spectacular sight, we'd get reductions in tides with and increase in variability if spring and neap tides.

Long term, one of the moon halves will go into a more elliptical orbit, diving down close to the atmosphere of the Earth and perhaps even skim off much of the atmosphere, resulting in widespread extinction of species and other unfavorable effects.

In conclusion, splitting the moon in half, while certainly a tempting endeavor, should probably not be seriously attempted as the end result could well be catastrophic with respect to planet Earth.

[2harddrive]

Rubber cement = BANNED by the fed.gov, which knows & does what is best for us, of course.

[SamAdams76]

I know. I'm such a troublemaker.

I haven't even told you all what I did up in the North Pole on my last vacation there.

Hint: Santa might not be making the rounds this year. Sorry kids. It wasn't intentional.

[Dutch Boy]

So where do you buy a saw that big? Lowe’s, Home Depot, Ace or Amazon?

[Farmerbob]

Long live Ookla the Mok and Princess Ariel!

[Slyfox]

No I am funnin’

[waterhill]

Ok, I remember. As soon as I started reading this, I thought of a tv show or movie that had a split moon

[TigersEye]

What’s done is done.

I say leave the two halves in the same orbit but separate them so they are exactly opposite.

I can’t even imagine the consequences of that so don’t blame me if someone gets hurt.
But I like symmetry.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

What about rubber chickens?

If they banned those I will have to riot. There is really no other reasonable option.

[Slyfox]

I have seen that. It is pretty cool.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Stay off the ganja, dude.

[SamAdams76]

Amazon Prime.

So free 2-day shipping. For convenience, I had it delivered directly to the moon. Would have had a hard time fitting it into my Tesla spaceship.

[Secret Agent Man]

The article is as relevant as asking “what if flibbety flork?”

[SamAdams76]

There's a Moon In The Sky (And It's Called The Moon)

[IndispensableDestiny]

If you cut the moon in half, you could never get them apart. Big rockets or not. I did see a movie once where they pushed the earth by building huge boosters on Antartica.

If you want two moons, your only choice is to blow the moon up into bits and pieces. Then work on getting those pieces to coalesce into two moons.

A more worthwhile effort would be to build a huge observatory and base smack in the middle of the far side. You'd get about 6 weeks of unobscured viewing. You'd relay data back to earth via satellite in lunar polar orbit.

I think the Chinese will do this (the observatory and base).

[Telepathic Intruder]

The very act of pushing them apart would give them different orbits, since you'd be giving them different orbital velocities. How much of a different orbit depends on how far above their combined escape velocities you pushed each half (which would be the same escape velocity of the original moon, 2.38 km/s). But unless there's some corrective circularization force applied, they would have very eccentric orbits.

The total minimum energy needed, by the way, is ½m·v², which calculates to about 1.9x10²⁹ joules, roughly equivalent to a 46 trillion megaton nuclear explosion.

[King Moonracer]

If it’s night time, we could land on the sun.

[who_would_fardels_bear]

One of two things would happen:

1) The elephant holding up the moon would stampede and the turtles would crawl back into their shells, or

2) The Grays hiding inside the hollow moon would launch their final attack against Earth.

[dangus]

Actually, there are places in an orbit where two massive objects can remain in stable orbit, neither crashing towards each other, or sending one or the other out of control.

They are called LaGrange points. They exist at 60 and 180 degrees. I would suspect that if the moon were split into two, and the two halves placed 60 degrees apart, the effect on the tides, etc. would be minimal enough to not have cataclysmic effects.

[Ransomed]

Thundarr the barbarian was micro-aggressing by being a white barbarian male who bossed around a minority monster beast-man and a woman sorcerer of color. He could only do this because he had access to superior technology, the sun sword.

—cnn dog squeeze pundit

Freegards, the humans must go free, wizard!!!

[Exit148]

Looks flat to me— no matter what a few astronauts said or did.