It would be hell. For starters, the days would be 48 times longer. During the night, the temperatures would freeze everyone to death. Throughout the day, no one could stand the heat. On the coast, extremely violent winds of 200 km/h would be a common breeze. Any signs of life? Forget it: there would be almost nothing left, except bacteria and super-resistant worms. All this shows how dependent the Earth is on this barren ball of minerals we call the Moon. Just to give you an idea, before the satellite started orbiting our planet, a day lasted between six and eight hours. Since then, interaction with the Moon has slowed down the planet’s rotation. By celestial mechanics, this happens as the satellite moves away. And look, he was already very close: more than 4 billion years ago, it is estimated that the Moon was only 25 thousand kilometers from Earth – today, the distance is 15 times greater. With this escape, the speed of rotation of the planet gradually decreased.
In about 3 billion years, the length of the day had already jumped to 18 hours. And don’t think our 24-hour day is going to last forever. The Moon continues to drift away – now at a faster rate than before, at a rate of 3.8 centimeters per year. This process must continue until the satellite is 560 thousand kilometers away. When that happens, the Earth’s rotation will stabilize, the days will have 1,152 hours and life around here will be the mess you read about at the beginning of the text. But don’t worry: first, this eternal end times will take at least 4 billion years to happen. Second, this chaotic scenario is likely to have no witnesses. In about 1 billion years, the Sun will be 10% hotter. That will be enough to fry any form of life around here. For what you will see below to happen, only if the Moon were to stray all at once, overnight.
lunar apocalypse
With the satellite far away, the planet’s climate would be in chaos and life would disappear.
Today, the Moon is 384,000 kilometers from Earth. At this distance, the satellite exerts a great influence on the length of the earth’s day, with its 24 hours, in addition to acting on the rise and fall of ocean tides. In a long time, however, this situation will change: the Moon is moving away from us about 3.8 centimeters per year2. In 4.6 billion years, when our satellite is about 560,000 kilometers away, Earth will be uninhabitable. The main effect of lunar retreat is that the planet’s rotation will slow down. With that, the days will last 1,152 hours, messing up the planet’s climate and preventing life, as you can see in the scenes below.
– (Ronaldo Lopes/)
RAIN ON THE COAST
The temperature at the poles would not be affected by longer days and nights — such periods will continue to last six months in these places, as they do today. The difference is that the temperature in tropical areas would increase at a rate that is impossible to predict today. What is certain is that the shocks of the cold air masses with the extremely hot ones would create storms capable of leaving coastal cities like New York under water.
– (Ronaldo Lopes/)
INLAND DESERT
If the rotation decreases, the east-west winds, which generate much of the rain in Brazil, lose intensity, as it is the Earth’s rotation that gives them strength. As the north-south winds would predominate, the storms that start with the evaporation of sea water would have difficulty entering the continents. As a result, inland regions such as the Brazilian Midwest would become much drier.
– (Ronaldo Lopes/)
MYSTERIOUS TEMPERATURE
Scientists have two hypotheses about what the weather would be like during the 576-hour “night”. The first is that the part of the planet that remains in the dark will experience polar temperatures, around -30ºC. The second is that evaporation in the illuminated part could create monster clouds up to 100 kilometers high. They would hold the sun’s heat, warming the dark part by greenhouse effect. This is exactly what happens on Venus, where the night lasts 2,916 hours and the temperature hovers around 400°C.
– (Ronaldo Lopes/)
LIVES IN DANGER
Hot or cold, rain or drought, life would be practically extinct. No plant or algae, for example, could last 576 hours (24 days in today’s rotation) without sunlight. That alone would break any food chain. The only beings that would certainly endure would be bacteria and worms that already live in extreme conditions, like at the bottom of the oceans, under a pressure a thousand times greater than that of the surface and without ever having seen the Sun. The world would be theirs alone.