What would happen If the Moon Crashed Into Earth? Day By Day.

The Moon is falling toward you right now. It has been falling for four and a half billion years, and it keeps missing. It flies sideways at about one kilometre per second, as fast as a rifle bullet. Earth pulls it in, the ground curves away beneath it, and it misses again. That is all an orbit is. Tonight at midnight, we cheat. We stop the Moon's sideways flight, which nothing in nature could do, and let it fall. The trip takes almost five days. On which day is the Moon halfway? Most people guess day two or three. The real answer is the end of day four, and everything you see in the first shot happens in the last day. Day by day, you will see what ordinary people would notice. Phones light up with the news, shops run out of water, and the sea stops keeping to its timetable. Then the streets flood, the tides grow as tall as houses, and the roads inland jam. You will see why halving the distance to the Moon makes the tides eight times higher instead of two, and why even the ground under your feet rises and sinks every day. That part is real, and a machine at CERN noticed it in 1992. Then the Moon crosses an invisible line close to Earth and starts to break apart. Will it leave rings like Saturn's? And is the impact, millions of times stronger than the asteroid that ended the dinosaurs, enough to smash the whole Earth to pieces? The twist: something like this has already happened. A planet the size of Mars, most likely one called Theia, once hit the young Earth, and the splash became our Moon. Our crash is the Moon's birth, played backwards. So should you worry? No. The real Moon is moving away by about 3.8 cm a year, roughly as fast as your fingernails grow. We know because Apollo astronauts left mirrors on the Moon, and telescopes still bounce lasers off them today. Chapters: 00:00 The Moon lands tonight 00:22 Rewind: a normal night 00:34 Why hasn't the Moon fallen yet? 01:09 Midnight: we stop the Moon 01:27 How far does it have to fall? 01:41 Day 1: the news hits every phone 02:33 Day 2: the sea stops keeping time 03:07 Day 3: the sea comes into town 03:33 Day 4: halfway, and the clock speeds up 03:48 Why the tides get 8 times higher 04:47 Day 4: people start to drown 05:09 Far from the sea: the ground moves (this part is real) 05:42 The last day: the Moon turns its face 06:13 Six hours left: the invisible line 06:38 Three hours left: rock, volcanoes, satellites 07:15 22 minutes left: the Moon breaks apart 07:57 The impact 08:22 Does Earth survive? 08:49 It already happened once: Theia 09:14 The real Moon is leaving us 09:58 A normal night Which day did you guess for halfway? Be honest. Tell us in the comments. #moon #space #science #astronomy #whatif #earth #physics #animation