What If the Moon Fell Into Earth? (It Already Did)

The Moon is falling toward Earth right now. It has been for four and a half billion years, and it keeps missing. Take away its sideways motion and it stops missing. From 238,000 miles out, with one force acting on it, there is exactly one answer: four days and twenty hours. And the impact is the least of it. By the time the Moon arrives, there is nothing left for it to arrive at. This is that timeline hour by hour: the tidal math that does the real damage, the Apollo mirrors that would catch it on day one, the moment the Moon crosses the Roche limit, and the collision that already happened once, the one that made the Moon in the first place. Chapters 00:00 Four Days, Twenty Hours 01:58 The First Three Days 04:41 The Last Twenty Hours 07:37 Impact, and What Comes After One question for the comments: if you had those 116 hours and knew nothing could be done with them, what would you go and look at? Sources Peale, Cassen and Reynolds, "Melting of Io by Tidal Dissipation," Science, 2 March 1979 https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19790041081 Linda A. Morabito, "Discovery of Volcanic Activity on Io: A Historical Review" https://arxiv.org/abs/1211.2554 T. W. Murphy, "Lunar Laser Ranging: The Millimeter Challenge," 2013 https://arxiv.org/abs/1309.6294 Canup and Asphaug, "Origin of the Moon in a giant impact near the end of the Earth's formation," Nature 412, 16 August 2001 https://www.nature.com/articles/35089010 The Roche limit explained https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-science/roche-limit Script written by Nathan Clarke.