We better destroy the moon before this happens. Pre-emptive asteroid strike.

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza....moon?

@beercheck:
When the moon hits your eye... that's a-painful.

I could reasonably expect to spill my drink. No, no. It would not be good at all.

Cheese for everybody!

it's not impossible that the moon could strike the Earth. Probably a comet or meteor strike on the moon at the rite angle would push it out of orbit and then it would spiral down into the planet. Some life might even survive, though not much. It would like the KT boundary die-off, only bigger.

Though the likelihood is way tiny. While th emoon is good at sheilding us from small meteors and comets, anything big enough to knock the moon out of orbit would probably be massive enough that it would be drawn towards Earth first. This would actually be better, as there's a likelihood of humans surviving a large impact, like a comet or good sized meteor but not much if the moon itself were to smack us.

Still, Love the artwork! Good stuff.

@Gyrus:
Ookla the Mok & Ariel would survive. So would Thundar...unless it crashed into his head.
...Then again, Thundar did have quite the helmet-hair going on.

Rocks fall, everybody dies.

@Miranda Kali: ++ Thought of Thundar myself.

@Gyrus, doubt there are any comets and such massive enough to knock the moon out of the sky (nowadays). The KT impactor is estimated to be about 4-9 miles in diameter, that wouldn't even budge the moon.

Lets be inventive and say a wandering black hole disrupts it's orbit. Sounds cooler too.

@mattclary: I will spot you your wandering black hole, sir.

Damn you, Cool Factor, you win again!

@beercheck: "Cheese for everybody!" - Say that loudly like a fat italian guy and you got yourself a winner.

This would never happen anyways, John de Lancie would figure out how to fix it to regain his Q-ness.

How curious to focus on the after-effects by seasons that would likely no longer exist in any meaningful way.

@mattclary: Two, no three words: interstellar rogue planet. Zoinks!

@Gyrus: Benford has done the wandering black hole thing once already. Say no to black holes!

Um... if that's the moon, then what's floating in space near the horizon a third in from the left?
Just, you know, asking.

I assume that that's another planet with a whole other set of moons.

Bigger planet + smaller moon = earth-like planetdeath anyway, but I'm a pedant and couldn't help but be awkward (and possibly humourless).

I'm pretty sure that no matter how the moon came apart and no matter how it fell it wouldn't drive knife like into the crust of the earth.

More likely a big explosion and crater... mv^2.
kaboom.

Considering the moon was most likely created by a massive object crashing into the earth and breaking a huge chunk of it off, if the moon were to crash into the earth for some reason, it's likely that either there would be a massive cratering of some form or another, or there would be enough debris that in addition to that cratering the Earth might earn itself a few moonlets.

That all being said, thankfully centripetal forces are actually pushing the moon farther and farther away from us and slowing its orbit. Eventually the moon will become facelocked to the Earth! (Imagine that, and what it might do to the tidal forces between the Earth and the Moon!)

Scenario: Moon Crashing into earth

What we need: A little boy who belives he is an elf but originally of human decent, a horse named epona, an ocarina, the abililty to morph into other species, a skullkid to defeat, the ability to travel back in time yet have certain events stay the same from your last travel, three giants to save the day and finally and most importantly a mad mask seller to make this all feasible.

I bet Kevin just has a massive list of awesome sci fi artist sites and he's releasing them to us in a slow but steady trickle. That's not a bad thing, though..

Isn't this what happened in The Time Machine with Guy Pierce. That probably was the best 2.5 minutes of the movie; the rest could have been left on the cutting room floor.

@Discodave: "Um... if that's the moon, then what's floating in space near the horizon a third in from the left?"

That's no moon... that's your mother.

This also happened in Tanith Lee's Silver Metal Lover! Well, not in the actual novel, but it's mentioned as having occurred before the protagonist was born.

@tcolberg: io9 did on post on that, actually.

@Ideaman:
"That's no moon... that's your mother"

She's about to launch an interplanetary smackdown on your ass.

And my daddy's Jupiter.

@ideaman2020: "That's no moon... that's your mother."

Are you looking for an interplanetary smackdown? My daddy's Jupiter.

Well, there goes the tides.

I read a book about this several years ago. Jack McDermitt? I thought it was so-so, interesting enough to keep reading. The moon was hit by an asteroid at an angle that caused the Earth to be Nearly obliterated. I forget how the hero saves the day. I liked the cover art.

@Jeff-Minor: That's typical of McDermitt's work-- Great cover art and a so-so story.

@B: Way ahead of you!

+ Watch video

They're gonna blow up the ocean!

@radio1: Really, it was very unsophisticated writing. I have to wonder how some of this stuff finds an editor that actually is impressed. There must be some pretty lame editors out there.

@Discodave: Yo mama so stupid, she went to Bangkok to get a TIE fighter...

The Moon falling to Earth would be seriously bad news for... well, everybody living on Earth. The airblast, even on the opposite side of the planet, would be around Mach 12, which would be amazing kite-flying weather, if you weren't killed instantly by it, of course.

@ ideaman2020
when I asked her about X-Men she said "Sure, there's Harry my first baby's daddy, Willy the guy I see on Thursdays..."