Alexander Abian | Hacker News Reader

Alexander Abian

en.wikipedia.org

23 pointsapollinaire11 comments

Destruction of the Moon is too complicated and large to execute so we can have theoretical discussions about it. We can, calmly, come up with second order effects and dismiss things etc.

However, there are smaller "nature modifications" like cloud seeding where I'm not sure such discussions happen and lots of people more or less blindly march into these. That, to me, is scary.

I am partial to a project to keep the moon from drifting away. Mostly because I like eclipses and want them to stick around for a while longer.

Otherwise I'm happy with the moon staying where it is.

"I like eclipses and want them to stick around for a while longer."

"The Moon ...has been slowly drifting outward at the rate of about 1.5 inches (3.8 cm) per year. Once it makes it past 14,600 miles (23,500 km), it’ll appear too small from Earth to cover the Sun. But don’t panic if you haven’t seen an eclipse yet ― you’ve got another 600-million-plus years before that border is breached." [0]

Hard agree! I would hate for the unimaginable denizens of Pangaea Ultima, toiling through their 28 hour days [1] to miss out on totality for a mere 'ring of fire' eclipse.

[0]: https://science.nasa.gov/moon/eclipses/

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_Earth

I didn't really remember the "blow up the moon", but he sure posted a lot about "Time has Inertia" on sci.physics.

"Abian proposed blowing up the moon with nuclear weapons. He reasoned that a moonless Earth wouldn't wobble; thus the seasons would be eliminated, as would extremes in weather, such as giant hurricanes, heat waves and blizzards." :-)

Unrelated but reminded me of this good sci-fi book "Seveneves" by Neal Stephenson.

We would lose tides, although I have no clue what that would cause.

But thats irrelevant, blowing up Moon means bits of Moon bigger than Britain would bombard Earth and wipe us all out, thats probably the only way to sterilize whole Earth before Sun does it with its expansion. Earth's crust could very well stop existing in its current form and mix with mantle in some brutal apocalyptic scenes that would make Michael Bay's stuff look like cave paintings from 40k years ago.

Amusingly, the article sandwiches the resulting mass planetary extinction in between concerns of practicality and efficacy as reasons to reject this idea:

> The proposed nuclear destruction of the Moon has been rejected by astronomers on several grounds: the nuclear arsenal of mankind would fail to do more than crack the Moon's crust; if successful, the heating of Earth's atmosphere by a hail of falling lunar debris would be destructive to all life; and an increase, not decrease, in the Earth's wobble without a stabilizing Moon, leading to an Earth axial tilt of 45 degrees and more drastic seasons would occur

Wrong idea for the right reasons?

I definitely did not see that coming lol

Talk of his death - https://groups.google.com/g/sci.astro.amateur/c/bC-7G4L8_HU/... including a discussion on how disruptive he was

He was posting until 9 days previous to his death - https://groups.google.com/g/sci.physics/search?q=abian%40ias...

I forgot about kill files - https://groups.google.com/g/sci.physics.particle/c/465iRYWZu...

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