1
Should We Blow
Up the Moon?

Buzz Aldrin stands next to the American flag that the Apollo 11 landing crew placed on the moon in July 1969. If you're set on visiting the moon, perhaps you'd better hurry. If Professor Alexander Abian has his way, the moon won't be around much longer.

Most people like the moon just the way it is. They write poems about it. They sing love songs to it. They hold hands under it. But Alexander Abian has a scheme that would change all that. He wants to blow up the moon!

Abian is a mathematics professor at lowa State University. He has a bold plan. First he wants to send some astronauts to the moon. They would drill a huge hole in the moon's surface. Into this hole they would tuck some nuclear bombs. After the astronauts are safely out of the way, someone back on Earth would push a remote control button. One second later, the moon would be blown to bits.

Why does Abian want to do this? He thinks it would improve the earth's weather. With the moon out of the way, he says, there would be no more blizzards in the Rocky Mountains. There would be no killer typhoons in Asia. Summer heat waves in New York City would end. So, too, would droughts in Africa. Not only would bad things end, but good things would start. According to Abian, the deserts and arctic regions would bloom. After we blow up the moon, says the professor, we would have pleasant weather all year long.

What does the moon have to do with snowstorms in Denver or floods in Bangladesh? Plenty, says Abian. The moon's gravity pulls on the earth. That tug keeps the earth tilted at a-degree angle. And that's the problem. It is this tilt that gives us our seasons. The side of the earth tilted toward the sun has summer and sweltering weather. The side tilted away from the sun has winter and chilling cold.

Now suppose we blow up the moon. According to Abian, the earth would then lose its-degree tilt. The amount of sunlight would no longer change with the seasons. It would be the same all year long.“Perpetual spring! ”promises Abian.

So why haven't we blown up the moon? Most people like having it around. More than a dozen countries like it so much they have put it on their national flags. Abian understands that. So he has come up with a second plan. He says we could try having two moons. We could “bring a moon from Mars.” It could be put on the other side of Earth from the first moon. That way, its pull would balance off the pull of the original moon. Now the Earth would have two moons but no tilt!

There is another serious problem with blowing up the moon. True, it might get rid of the earth's tilt. But such a change might cause massive earthquakes. David Taylor of Northwestern University observes, “[Abian] would destroy civilization. But we'd have great weather.” Thomas Stix of Princeton adds that most scientists wouldn't touch Abian's idea “with a 10-foot pole.”

Such talk doesn't bother Abian. He wants to shake things up.Why, he asks, do we have to accept the solar system the way it is? Why can't we move things around? Abian has some other ideas as well.He would like to change the orbit of Venus.It's too close to the sun, he says. Temperatures on Venus are a toasty 900°F. Abian thinks we should move Venus away from the sun. That would cool the planet and perhaps make it fit for human life. How does Abian recommend we move Venus?“We can shoot it with rockets, ”he suggests.

No one is holding his or her breath waiting for these things to happen. Even Abian knows that other scientists think his ideas are a bit strange. “I don't think [anything will happen] in my lifetime or in my children's lifetime, ” he says. “But I want to plant the seed.”