• Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      6 months ago

      Pretty sure that, even if we managed to haul every piece of the moon back to Earth, we would not get close to the material required to fill the circled area. It’d be sufficient for maybe 5 miles of extending the coast line, but not much more.

      • Richard@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        14
        ·
        6 months ago

        The moon has a volume of 21,971,669,064 km³. I am very certain that you could fill the area in question with that!

          • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            6
            ·
            6 months ago

            I went a more math-less way when I read this originally. The moon is about a quarter the width (diameter) of the Earth, and the variances in the height of the Earth’s crust (mountains and trenches) aren’t visible in satellite images of Earth. If you cut the moon in half and put it down in the Atlantic, would it change the contour of the Earth’s crust as seen from orbit? Yeah, it’d be another eighth-again as wide on one side. You’d notice.

            Doing some quick checking confirms: the Atlantic has a volume of about 355 million cubic kilometers. The moon is about 22 billion cubic kilometers. So you’d only need about 1.6% of the moon to fill up the Atlantic.

            This is fun. It feels like an xkcd What-If.