• Question: If there were more moons orbiting the Earth, would there be bigger waves? and would there be more land or sea, or make no difference?

    Asked by mushixxx to Claire, Kate, Matt, Rob, Sam on 24 Jun 2013. This question was also asked by rosieredxxx.
    • Photo: Kate Husband

      Kate Husband answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      If there were more than 1 Moon orbiting the Earth then we would likely have more than 2 tides a day. The Moon pulls on one side of Earth and as we rotate we get tides that change. Hence more moons would give more forces on the water and so more tides. Whether any of this tides would overlap to give stronger tides would depend on where the Moons are around the Earth. But certainly one super Moon (that is more massive than now) would give larger tides.

    • Photo: Robert Woolfson

      Robert Woolfson answered on 25 Jun 2013:

      Short answer – Maybe, maybe, maybe. We don’t know.

      There’s something in maths called the three body problem. This is a group of problems involving, as you can probably guess, three different objects. Working out how two different objects behave is relatively simple. Add a third one in and the system becomes what is called chaotic. This is shorthand for stupendously complicated and unpredictable.

      The earth and the moon is a two body problem and is quite well understood. Add another moon in and you have a three body problem. It’s entirely likely that a third moon could cause the orbit of our current moon to change, making it either escape (bad) or crash in to us (worse).

      What it could do to the oceans, that’s anyone’s guess.

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