Effects on the Earth if the moon was at 1/10th current distance?
According to Wikipedia and this answer, the Moon is orbiting the Earth at a distance around 20 times greater than than the point where it would break up. As far as I can tell, that means in a fictional world, we could have a moon the size of our Moon, only ten times closer to the Earth (as in $\frac1{10}$ its current distance, or around 38,000km), with absolutely no fear of collisions or the moon breaking up.
Such a satellite would be quite a sight, lighting up the night sky (when its orbit matched up"”I guess it'll be moving faster now) and just generally being the biggest thing up there (as far as appearances go).
What I'm wondering, though, is if there would be any geographical changes to the Earth as a result of this closer relationship with the moon (if you're thinking about this question, I checked; it didn't cover what I'm asking here). Would the Moon pull mountains from the depths of the oceans, or would its tides sweep away our coastlines? Would there perhaps be shifts in weather/climate (not sure if this can be considered geography, but I'd still like to know)?
Just as a hint, according to this answer, "tides are proportional to $\frac{\text{mass}}{\text{distance}^3}$", so a moon 10x closer would have 1000x the tidal forces. I assume this wouldn't lead to waves one thousand times higher than normal, but I can't believe that everything would be the same.
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/27062. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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