4 Questions About the Moon You're Afraid to Ask Until Now

[Music] attention earthlings recently new moon research has shown that it's constantly shrinking and shaking from huge quakes what could that mean for our natural satellite and for us what will happen if the moon continues to shrink will it shrink to the size of a baseball or just you know explode put your thinking cap on because it's time to delve into some insane theories and what-ifs about the Moon what what if the moon doesn't stop shaking to kick things off here are some puzzling facts about the Moon for you it was once shaped like a donut it's mostly made of magma launched into orbit from the surface of the earth it's shrinking and it's moving further away from us with every passing year if all this leaves you scratching your head then let me elaborate the history of the moon started 4.5 billion years ago very few photos exist at that time the earth was still a young planet covered with red hot magma oceans at some point a huge mars-sized object crashed into it the impact was around 100 million times more powerful than the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs from the face of the earth all this power launched the liquid magma into space at first the mass took the shape of a doughnut without a hole thinner in the center and thicker near the edges as time went by this proto moon started to form into the sphere we all know but would you be surprised to know that it's not just an inactive rock in the sky and that the moon is actually still cooling down from its explosive birth this is exactly why it's shrinking every material raises its density as the temperature lowers this leads to shrinking ok the shrinking part is explained but what about the shaking it actually comes from the same process you see as the hot core of the Moon is cooled down in the last hundred million years the moon has become thinner by about 150 feet of course this process wasn't easy on the crust of the boat it's still moving and pushing onto itself forming cracks called scarps near these scarps the moon is still pretty active trembling from the underground quakes the giant impact hypothesis of the moon's formation is not a hot new thing in science but it always had one big flaw if the moon was formed by a mars-sized object hitting the earth more than 1/2 of its mass would consist of the remains of this object existing evidence proves that it's the exact opposite the moon is unique in how similar it is to the earth on April 29th 2019 a new study was released by Natsuki hosono and his team addressing this flaw by adding magma oceans to the proto-earth this explained the similarity between the moons and the Earth's composition since it's much easier to launch liquid magma into orbit than solid material this is why the moon now mostly consists of material from the earth the study explaining the moon shrinking and shaking processes appeared shortly after on May 13th released by a group of US scientists led by Thomas our waters the most remarkable thing about this study is that it's based on data collected from seismometers placed on the surface of the Moon by Apollo astronauts it's mind-blowing how big those steps were for humanity after all before this study scientists had no idea what caused the moon quakes but today it's finally explained and we don't have to worry about our moon impacting our safety huh what a relief - what'll happen if the moon keeps moving away from the earth maybe the shrinking of the moon won't affect us but the other irreversible process is posing a real threat or maybe not at all ha ha let me explain the thing is every year the moon is getting about an inch and a half further from the earth doesn't sound like much but consider this at the time of its birth the moon was only fourteen thousand miles away from the earth and now it's around 250,000 miles away if you ever rode a merry-go-round then you know exactly why the moon is spinning away from us the spinning itself creates a force pushing out on the object the spins the earth has the same problems as the moon the moon is pulling a tidal bulge on the Earth's oceans but that bulge doesn't point directly to the moon because of the earth spinning it points slightly ahead of it the combination of these powers is pushing back onto the moon moving it away if the moon gets far enough away its crucial influence on our world will become less and less powerful for example tides won't be as prominent as they were before and that'll lead to mass extinction fortunately this change isn't coming tomorrow and the earth has lots of time to prepare but there is another problem the same process causes the earth to slow down 3 what if the moon slows down the earth believe it or not when the moon was forming the earth was spinning so fast that it took only four hours for it to go full circle four hours in a day is great for Monday's maybe but overall it would be a problem the moon's presence on the Earth's orbit is what slowed our planet down so the moon has extended our day by 19 hours since its birth 4.5 billion years ago the longer days are beneficial for life on the earth but it's far from being over if you've ever asked for a 25th hour in the day you'll eventually get it in the next quarter of a billion years but you might not be glad about it the Earth's slowing down is not actually a great thing the slower the earth the less stable it is it'll start to wobble and that'll affect the climate drastically winters will be much colder and summers will be hotter in such conditions nothing would be able to adapt still the good news is it's billions of years from happening for what if a giant asteroid hit them all let's talk about something that could happen almost instantly have you ever noticed how the surface of the bone is covered in craters these are the imprints of countless impacts from meteoroids and asteroids but what about the earth thankfully the earth has an atmosphere that the moon lacks this atmosphere is our space shield if any objects try to fall to the earth surface friction will be generated setting the object of blaze and burning it to ashes a meteoroid would have to be more than 25 feet in size to go through the atmosphere and not burn out anything bigger than that might cause some trouble even for the earth the moon is much more vulnerable almost everything that takes aim at it will hit it and do a lot of damage but on the other hand the moon doesn't have a fragile ecosystem to protect so even a giant asteroid doesn't pose much threat to it it would just be another crater on the surface to actually do significant damage to the moon like to move it from orbit it would take an object relatively close in size to the moon itself and that's not happening any time soon well it seems like all the mysteries the moon hides are not a mortal threat at least not in the near hundreds of millions of years at that point we'll probably live on new planets all with their own new moons who knows today we're just taking our first steps outside of our home planet the second expedition to the moon is planned for 2024 given the results of the previous one I wonder how significant this new flight will be and what do you think the new moon expedition will uncover share your ideas in the comment section if you learned something new today then give this video a like and share it with a friend but hey don't go anywhere just yet we have over 2000 cool videos for you to check out all you have to do is pick the left or right video click on it and enjoy stay on the bright side of life

Channel: BRIGHT SIDE

Views: 584,411

Rating: 4.7235541 out of 5

Keywords: outer space, the universe, space, stars, astronomy, astrophysics, recent discoveries, discovery, facts about the Universe, fun science, planets, facts about space, dangerous scenario, the Moon, history of the Moon, how the moon was formed, how the moon was born, the moon shaking, the moon shrinking, moonquakes, Mars, the Earth, meteoroids, asteroids

Id: cKVV-0OYJas

Length: 8min 41sec (521 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 03 2019