Earth's moon destined to disintegrate

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Solar influence
The Sun’s mutation into a red giant provides a huge stumbling block to the moon’s getaway and is likely to ensure the moon ends its days the way it began; as a ring of Earth-girdling debris.

“The density and temperature both increase rapidly near the apparent surface (photosphere) of the future giant sun,” Willson explained. As the Earth and Moon near this blistering hot region, the drag caused by the sun's extended atmosphere will cause the moon's orbit to decay. The moon will swing ever closer to Earth until it reaches a point 11,470 miles (18,470 kilometers) above our planet, a point termed the Roche limit.

“Reaching the Roche limit means that the gravity holding [the moon] together is weaker than the tidal forces acting to pull it apart,” Willson said.

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The moon will be torn to pieces and every crater, mountain, valley, footprint and flag will be scattered to form a spectacular 23,000-mile-diameter (37,000-kilometer) Saturn-like ring of debris above Earth’s equator. The new rings will be short-lived. Theory dictates they'll eventually rain down onto Earth’s surface.

“Particles of different masses will have different survival times; the smaller particles will be removed first, and the biggest ones last. Most of the ring particles would be gone by the time the Earth reaches the stellar photosphere,” Willson said.

If the Sun’s photosphere reaches Earth, our planet too will experience drag and spiral into the Sun to be incinerated.

There are possible natural alternatives, however.

If the sun as a red giant sloughs off enough material before Earth evaporates, our planet will be revealed from its stellar cocoon in a moon-less guise. Earth, robbed of its companion, would undertake a lonely vigil as the sun turns eventually into a stellar corpse called a white dwarf, fading to black over the ensuing trillions of years.

Alternatively, if the swelling sun loses 20 percent of its mass prior to it reaching our vicinity, both Earth and the moon could be spared incineration and remain together facing each other for eternity. The actual outcome remains a theoretical uncertainty because no red giant star has been observed during this crucial phase.

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