What Would Happen if the Moon Exploded?

Let’s say the explosion was humongous. A team of deep-core drillers digs a hole to the center of the Moon. They drop a bunch of nukes and fly away.

They detonate the bombs and the moon explodes just like in the graphic above. The blast is so powerful that some fragments fly towards Earth.

Note: It has to be a big explosion because if the blast wasn’t powerful enough, then most of the Moon fragments wouldn’t travel very far. Eventually these fragments would reform into a new planet. (After a few millennia.)

Now, some of these large chunks are hurtling towards us. Are we doomed? Probably not. Earth’s orbit would catch a lot of them. They’d orbit the Earth like a miniature asteroid belt, smashing our satellites and knocking out cell phone service.

Since the chunks don’t have thrusters, they’ll have a decaying orbit. This means eventually the chunks would fall down to Earth. But since the chunks aren’t travelling too fast, they wouldn’t do much damage. Although if they landed anywhere inhabited, then everything in the immediate area would be squashed. But we’re only talking city blocks here. Not entire cities or countries. (Most of the moon was vaporized.)

Tidal forces would be affected. But ships don’t sail with the tides anymore, so that’s not a big deal.

Good thing: The sky would be a lot brighter! After the Sun, the Moon is the second brightest object in the sky. So, you’d be able to see a lot more stars.

The worst thing: We’d lose our opportunity to establish a super cool Moon base.