If a single person, would have the needed abilites to stop moon from colliding with earth..?

Question

This single person, would have the abilities of flight, as well as the abilitity to generate physical forces that are impossible to imagine in reality.

He or she would try to stop the moon from impacting against earth, by coming to a stillstand in the upperatmosphere (vertically) of earth, and widen his/hers arms as much as he/she can, and then proceed by pressing the opened palms of his/her hands against a tiny portion of moons surface.

If the person would be able to generate enough force to oppose the mass of the moon(when it`s already in the upper atmosphere of terra), what would happen with the moon?

Would the parts where he/she would be not applying her strength(which is 99,9%, of its surface), break or shatter, because of the gravitiational forces which come from earth?

Yes I do love superheroe/heroine based fiction, but I`m interested to hear what people have to say about the scientific side of this.

Answer 1

Well, it depends on how hard this superman is pushing on the moon with his hands. If he is pushing so hard that he exceeds the breaking strength of the rock the Moon is made of, the Moon will fracture instead of being pushed as a whole. In effect, he could punch right through the Moon!

Here's some math. First, let's ignore the Earth's gravity for simplicity's sake and just consider the inertia of the Moon. Let's say the breaking strength of the moon rock is 100 million Newtons per square meter, which should be in the ballpark. The area of superman's hands is about 0.1 square meter. The mass of the Moon is about 7.3E22 kg.

The maximum he could push without crushing the rock then would be 10 million Newtons of force. Using Newton's 2nd law, F=ma, the maximum he could accelerate the Moon using this force is then 1.4E-16 meters per sec per sec!  That is TINY!!  To put that in perspective, it would take 231 million years for superman to change the velocity of the moon by 1 meter per sec!!  

As a comparison, the force of the Earth's gravity on the Moon is around 6E23 Newtons, give or take. This force certainly would shatter the Moon if it was concentrated in one spot, but  instead it is spread out nearly evenly over the entire mass of the moon which is why the internal stresses in the Moon are pretty small. However, if a moon is orbiting too close to a large planet, the tidal forces due to the pull of gravity can deform or even break apart a moon.

But to sum up, your intuition is correct here. The Moon would fracture way before superman could push on it hard enough to affect its motion. Even if the Moon rock were a million times stronger, it would still take many hundreds of years of pushing for a superman to accelerate the Moon appreciably without accidentally punching right through it.

Answer 2

This is actually a simple case of physics. If you apply the force with a lot of velocity, that is, if the superman approaches the moon at 700 miles per hour, then he will peirce the surface like a bullet. He will probably not peirce it more than 20 feet however, and the moon will jerk back. Large peices of it might fall off, its likely the bulk will stay intact.

If he approaches slowly and applies more pressure, then it will probably all stay together.

One of the biggest misconceptions that people have about physics, is that the gravitational pull of the earth is minimal when you get into outer space.

Actually, astronauts in orbit around earth float around, not because of gravity, but because they are in freefall. The force of gravity is close to the same at the orbit of a satelitte as it is on the surface. The pull of earth is still in effect, although greatly reduced, when you reach the moon, but the moons gravity counters it.

The moon is actually, like all orbiting objects in freefall with the earth. Because the earth is moving, the moon misses the earth and the gravity of the earth pulls it around like a slingshot, which creates the obiting effect.

Answer 3

It depends on acceleration and impact. If your supposed super-being flew straight at it at full speed and their body was strong enough as to survive an impact unharmed and unslowed, then its possible they would do as much damage as an asteroid of meteor of comparable size when they hit.

Sustained force against the object of sufficient strength to overcome the gravity the earth exerts on the moon and the gravity the moon exerts on the earth would obviously alter the moons orbit.

The gravitational forces would likely not be strong enough to effect the moon, its essentially a big dead rock, but the disturbance caused on the earth would be catastrophic. Tidal waves, seismic activity, vulcanism would all be likely results.

The moon is currently moving away from the earth at centimeters per year. If you rewind that a few billion years, at its closest, the moon once filled a quarter of the sky. This corresponded with a period of incredible vulcanic activity. Man has only been around the last couple of million years and only been keeping records for 4 or 5 thousand, so nobody was around to see what things were like then and its hard to predict how the earth would react.

Answer 4

Well, I don't know why the Moon would be in the Earth's upper atmosphere to begin with.  But since the Moon is an extended rigid object, I believe that even a highly localized application of force would simply move the entire body.  If the Moon were hollow, I would say that a large force would most likely pierce the surface.  But for the big, solid Moon, the body is strong and stiff enough that the most likely response would be for the body to simply accelerate in the direction of the force, rather than deform at the point of application.

Answer 5

um, the scientific side would be that the moon would never crash into the earth.  The moon is actually moving AWAY from the earth and will continue to do so until it is no longer caught in our gravity well.  

As for the superhero, it all depends on what the moon is made of.  If it is a very pliable substance (can take lots of pressure before shattering) than it will buckle in, but not break apart while the superhero was pushing.  If it was not, it would shatter into a billion pieces, each of which would fall to the earth and cause more damage than the whole of the moon.

Answer 6

Clearly they do. Why do you think the moon hasn't crashed into the Earth yet? I'm up there every night pushing it back.

Answer 7

i simply dont know but i bet it would be awesome

Answer 8

WHAT ARE YOU SMOKING?!?!?!?!?!?  I'LL TAKE 2 OF WHATEVER YOU'RE HAVING!