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Funkyduck8 t1_je1g6ml wrote

Is it not worrisome that countries will be trying to mine and extract minerals from the moon? If something goes wrong and the moon cracks, or fractures, wouldn't that spell absolute disaster for Earth? I may be fearful but as humans are destroying Earth with mining, imagine what could happen on something smaller.

Edit: downvoted for not wanting the moon to become another polluted, capitalistic cash grab. Lol

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arshesney t1_je1nfsn wrote

Crack or fracture? Have you seen how many craters there are on the Moon? Do you think anything man-made can get close to that scale?
No, you can throw the global nuclear arsenal to the Moon and it won't budge, and it'll still be there long after we are gone.

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MonkeyTigerCrazy t1_je1majt wrote

No, it’s not because even if we cut the moon in half nothing would really happen other than it just reshaping into another sphere, and there’s no incredibly valuable environment to destroy there so it doesn’t really matter

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aba-i t1_je2hdu1 wrote

Do our ocean tides not completely depend on the moons gravity?

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Kantrh t1_je2vz90 wrote

We couldn't mine the moon fast enough to affect the tides in any appreciable timescale

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MonkeyTigerCrazy t1_je2oq7b wrote

Would be a problem if the moon got closer because tides would be more extreme but not if the moon shattered, that would just get rid of tides if it eventually turned into a ring

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[deleted] t1_je1xfsw wrote

[deleted]

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MonkeyTigerCrazy t1_je22wbe wrote

How would anything happen if the moon gets holes drilled in it? It’s not losing any noticeable energy like the mass that gets sent back to earth so nothing would happen

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[deleted] t1_je1gmuo wrote

[removed]

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SpoilsOfTour t1_je23vse wrote

When I was a kid I had a physics teacher who tried to get us excited with this theory. His argument was that the moon is

  1. Perfectly spherical

  2. Locked with one side that always faces Earth

  3. Placed at such a distance that it appears exactly the same size as our sun in the sky.

I doubt that he truly believed it, I think he just wanted to make the subject more interesting for kids, but I've always been fascinated by astronomy, and the idea that things aren't what they seem is always cool.

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Kantrh t1_je2w6r5 wrote

The moon isn't perfectly spherical

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Eye-tactics t1_je357jb wrote

The moon is a fragment of an ancient planet named Theia. It collided with earth and the molten remnants formed into a sphere by gravity. I'm pretty sure there isn't anything weird about the moon being circular like that. There are literally remnants of the planet sticking out of our crust and core of the planet recently mapped.

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/bits-of-theia-might-be-in-earths-mantle/ The animation in this article show what I'm talking about.

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