What if the Earth had more than one moon?

 

What if the Earth had more than one moon?

A question many have asked over time, compared to many other planets that we know have several moons.

But one of the most important differences between our moon and the rest of the moons and other satellites of the planets are that the mass of our moon more than 1% of the mass of our Earth, while the other moons do not exceed the mass of any of them 0.0003% of the mass of the planet orbiting it. This vast difference makes the impact of our moon on our Earth greater than the impact of the rest of the moons of the solar system, in terms of the impact of the moon's gravity on the movement of large water bodies, and even on the speed of Earth's rotation around itself and thus along the Earth's 24-hour day.

There are several scenarios for our imagined second moon and we will stick to the analysis by Neil Cummins, a professor of physics at the University of Maine in the United States and the author of the scenario that assumes that the second moon - called «Luna» - smaller than the current moon, but located in the orbit between the Earth and the moon.

Suppose that the story of the beginning of Luna's orbit around Earth does not concern us, and that Luna is stable in its orbit. Cummins says the tidal forces will make the tide eight times higher now because lunar gravity will double. On the other hand, our nights will be less dark due to the doubling of the amount of light reflected by the two moons.

The existence of Luna will affect the course of human civilization, such as the architecture and infrastructure of coastal cities; for example, because of water will reach higher levels, which will increase the rate of erosion of stone structures and iron rust, which would have led humans to find more efficient ways to combat it. On the other hand, the evolution of the calculations of the months would have changed radically to calculate the existence of two moons and the calculation of their phases, which could mean a different lunar calendar and how to calculate the entry and exit of the month.

In fact, our original moon is far 4 centimeters per year from Earth. Assuming that Luna is gradually moving away from Earth at a greater rate, we can imagine a terrible collision between the two satellites at some point in the future and their fragmentation of millions of small stones. Some of this debris will fall to the ground and may cause several disasters, and some will fly in space away from it.

But much of the debris will continue to orbit the Earth. Because they are small rocks of varying sizes, the speed of their rotation around the Earth will vary, leading to their spread around the Earth in orbits forming rings such as the rings of Saturn.

Some scientists believe that the Earth orbits some temporary moons because of the Earth's gravity attracts some planets scattered in the solar system, so that these small asteroids orbit around the Earth for several weeks or months before they succeed in escaping their gravity to go on its way.

These planets have no negative or positive effects. Another hypothesis is that there was another very small moon that orbited our Earth four or five billion years ago and that the moon hit our moon and broke up. Throughout historical periods, the moon - the current one - has collected the rest of the crumbs in its orbit because of its own appeal.