• Question: If the moon was making a dirict course towards earth at 0.000000001 nanometres a day would we end up dying? and if so then how long it take before we would die and what would most likely kill us. Also what is the minimum speed the moon must be tavaling towards the earth to wipe out the human race.

    Asked by firefly :) to Andrea, Charlie 🚀, Col Op, Kirsty, Vinita on 12 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Kirsty Lindsay

      Kirsty Lindsay answered on 12 Jun 2016:


      I wasn’t too sure how to answer your question Firefly- so I asked a friend at CERN and this is what he said:

      ‘Well the Moon drifts away from Earth (a few cm per year), however assuming it was moving towards Earth then obviously it would hit us at some point. This would have to be due to some orbital perturbations. We would die because of tsunami most likely, since the Moon gravity attracts oceans causing tides, and the closer the Moon would get the stronger the pull would be. In this case there is no “minimum speed”, since it doesn’t even need to hit us at all’

    • Photo: Andrea Boyd

      Andrea Boyd answered on 13 Jun 2016:


      A Moon bolide the size of the Moon travelling at any speed would take out Earth. Would we die? No, because at the speed you mentioned, we wouldn’t still be alive when it eventually crashed into Earth. Also I agree with what Kristy said.

      Perhaps you should check out NASA’s ARM concept mission. It’s probably going to be cancelled, but it’s up your alley, thinking about relocating giant rocks in space https://www.nasa.gov/content/what-is-nasa-s-asteroid-redirect-mission/

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