Is 'Life as We Knew It' Feasible?

The prospect of an end to life as we know it could be played out in a myriad of separate events. There's everything from global disasters to political insurgency to a legitimate religious end of days. Regardless of the spectrum of the apocalypse, there's little doubt that the entirety of the human race will be able to survive all of time, and there's a chance in the future, hopefully not near, that everything we know could eventually come to an end.

In the book 'Life as We Knew It,' the apocalypse comes through the concept of collision between a very large meteor and the moon. While the size of the meteor being smacked against the moon is never given, it's assumed to be large, and knocks the moon off of its once clear orbit. As a result, chaos ensues back on Earth, with weather patterns fluctuating, tides turning into tsunamis, days getting longer, and other natural disasters that pits main character Miranda against nature.

So how feasible is this scenario?

A large amount of interstellar objects actually collide with the moon quite frequently. When smaller objects come in contact with the moon, there's really no backlash to what happens. It's more of just a small asteroid or tiny space rock hitting against the side of the moon and really not doing the level of damage present in the novel.

Metaphorically, imagine it like throwing a golf ball against a concrete wall. There may be a little bit of dirt or dust that bounces off of the wall, but there's really no damage at all being done to the wall itself. Because of this, the moon is not smooth but rather is covered in craters and tiny little pockets that were caused as a result of the tiny different rocks that end up hitting the moon.

So what puts us in danger?

According to the Atlantic newspaper, if there was an asteroid that was the size of the moon that managed to ram into the moon, the moon would finally shatter into pieces. Because of the magnitude of both pieces of space rock, when one comes in contact with the other, it provides enough magnitude to not only knock the Earth off of its course but even come close to destroying it. What does this mean for the rest of us?

The moon is what regulates the tides of the ocean. Because of this, there's a common pattern regulation to how the ocean waves interact with the Earth's atmosphere and therefore have some sort of dictation to weather patterns and global interaction. If this system were to be thrown off because the controller of the tides was broken, all of a sudden the weather patterns and interactions become both uncontrolled and unpredictable. Even still, the pieces of the moon that were shattered as a result of the major collision between the moon and the moon-sized asteroid would be able to fly towards the Earth, because their size and mass would be too high for the atmosphere to burn up and destroy.

So the verdict? It would take a large asteroid, larger than mankind has seen before, to be able to recreate the things present in 'Life as We Knew It.' However, this doesn't make it impossible. It's scary to think about, but if the idea of destroying the moon and taking away one of the fundamental controllers of the laws of Earthly physics, both the physical and environmental results could be, for the human race, fatal.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/11/what-if-a-large-asteroid-were-to-hit-the-moon/248129/