What Would Happen If We Blew Up the Moon?

[C C]

http://gizmodo.com/what-would-happen-if-...1796725643

EXCERPT: The Moon is the Tango to Earth’s Cash, the Hall to our Oates, the Lennon to our McCartney before they hated each other. Simply put, our planet and the Moon are soul mates: except, of course, if something were to happen to one of them. Like, I don’t know, what if we just blew up the Moon? For this week’s Giz Asks, Gizmodo spoke to astronomers and planetary scientists about the ramifications of blowing up our beloved satellite. While the idea has been excellent fodder for sci-fi (hello, Neal Stephenson), it’s worth understanding what would actually happen if some madman decided to destroy the Moon. Just... don’t get any ideas, okay?

[...] How would the tides be impacted if the moon exploded? Taken semi-literally, the tides would be splashed to kingdom come. [...] Would Earth look different if we blew up the Moon? The moon is precious—it stabilizes the Earth’s spin-axis. Without the moon, the Earth will tumble chaotically...

MORE: http://gizmodo.com/what-would-happen-if-...1796725643

[Yazata]

If "somebody blew up the Moon" we would have to think about where the larger fragments went. Some would likely collide with the Earth.

But what if the Moon suddenly just wasn't there?

I'm skeptical about the chaotic tumbling thing. Mercury and Venus don't have moons and they don't seem to tumble chaotically on a timescale that we can observe. Mars has two tiny moons (perhaps gravitationally captured asteroids) and it doesn't tumble chaotically either, despite the moons' small size compared to the planet.

Tides would be a lot less. There may be some geophysical effects associated with that. Earthquakes perhaps.