Hmm, Speaking of distracting… Would one feel a land-tide as it moved?
With the moon that close, I’d guess you’d have to feel something.
Don’t ask for too much realism. As @doubletee noted above, the moon would quickly disintegrate. Then things get really exciting!
This brings up something that sort of bugs me – all those desktop wallpapers featuring planets impossibly close to what might be “substitute Earth”. (See example, attached – there are lots of other examples out there.) At what point would the planets simply be too big to co-exist that closely? Wouldn’t they at some point simply smash into each other due to gravitational attraction?
Earth-moon distance (real) was given as center-to-center, while earth-moon distance (imagined) was surface-to-surface. He should have been consistent, or explained it better.
“Wouldn’t they at some point simply smash into each other due to gravitational attraction?”
Gravity doesn’t work like that, when you are in orbit you are still being gravitationally attracted to whatever planet you are orbiting, you’re just moving horizontally so fast that you fall round it. Thus if you had a smooth enough planet with no atmosphere you could orbit at just 1m above the surface if you got the speed just right.
However, if you had 2 planets that close to each other then because the top of the planet orbiting would have such a different pull of gravity to the bottom they would actually be ripped apart (see Roche limits) and end up as a ring system like Saturn has (this is likely how Saturn got its rings, a moon got too close to Saturn and was pulled apart by the tidal forces)
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The real problem here is giving such a precise figure (384,400km) when in reality the distance between the Earth and Moon varies between 363,000 km and 406,000 km
You might never see them; the earthquakes and volcanoes might get you first.
This is the stuff of nightmares for me. Not sure why.
Should have replied with a confession bear…
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Well, the average of those two extremes is 384,500 km, so I imagine simplicity was the goal.
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