Out-of-Place Department: the Moon as Debris Ring Around the Earth

JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

[Source: 50watts.com, "Tetrahedra in Space", Frank R. Paul series, here.]

See also an earlier post, "Things out of Place Department: the Moon", here.

This is certainly the work of a delightful and bouncing imagination, more so with the illustration by the great Frank R. Paul.  The image is found on the back cover of  the August 1953 issue of Science Fiction Plus for the short story "The End of the Moon".   And what we see--at least from the artwork as I cannot find an online version of the text--is a not-convincing result of the Moon going away.  I'm not an historian of the idea of the vanishing Moon and how early writers have imagined it ailing/disappearing/exploding/imploding, though I'm fairly well sure that the scifi wasn't keeping up with the 1953 science of it all, at least with what I can see and understand.

If there was no Moon.  What if the Moon never existed? What if the Moon existed but vanished?  I guess it would all depend on what exactly happened to the Moon to figure out the disposition of its remaining assets.  The Moon removed certainly would effect changes in the tides, though I think not in the way depicted above. There would substantial changes  though I think not enough to cause a new continent to rise out of the middle of the Atlantic, or to flood all of northeastern Africa.  "If  We Had No Moon", an essay by Bernard Foing in Astrobiology Magazine, here, provides an interesting tidal change map (below) which shows a projection of the main hotbeds of tidal change. 

Since I have no access to the text of the scifi article I don't know if the story addressed changes to the weather and migratory patterns of animals in response to tidal changes, or what happens to large coastal cities, or the influence of a more volatile seasonal change, or changes to the Earth's orbital parameters, and so on.

Its the "and so on" part that is the most interesting left-out bit.

Bottom line here is that I just like the great cover art for the story



Another interesting article from ScienceNordic, here.