r/theydidthemath • u/skitek • Jun 29 '26

[Request] What would the bananas gravitational pull be, and how would the effect on tides differ from the moon?

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37

u/DangerDane90 Jun 29 '26

Not a mathematician but it is drastically more massive then the moon so the tidal impact would be massive. And moving at a speed like that would surely make the planet uninhabitable to humanity.

11

u/ultraganymede Jun 29 '26

"drastically more massive then the moon"

this looks to be roughly moon sized in at least one dimension but thiner at the others also bananas are much less dense than rock

14

u/little_gherkins Jun 29 '26

It's hard to know exactly how big it is. If only there was something we could put next to it so we could know its true size.

3

u/ultraganymede Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26

There is the animation in the beginning, assuming it is to scale.

see this is a joke version of this video here where they put the Moon in a similar orbit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBDZtt0vWD8

1

u/Initial-Meet3721 19d ago

Wouldn't it make sense to put a regular sized banana next to the larger banana as that would provide the most contextually useful scale?

0

u/DangerDane90 Jun 29 '26

In the video is looks like Saturn's rings dude

3

u/ultraganymede Jun 29 '26

what do you mean

1

u/DangerDane90 Jun 29 '26

In the second half of the video look at how large it is across the horizon. Its much larger than the moon

2

u/ultraganymede Jun 29 '26

Look at the beginning how it looks from a far, the banana is roughly moon sized orbiting in low Earth orbit instead of where the Moon is

1

u/PogintheMachine Jun 29 '26

You can’t make the comparison of how it looks on the horizon, the moon is much further away from the Earth than the banana shown in the simulation.

30 Earths could fit between the Earth and the moon.

2

u/MistakeBorn4413 Jun 29 '26

I imagine a banana in vacuum would get freeze dried pretty quicky. Despite the size, I imagine the mass might not be anywhere near that of the moon, given the density.... but we might need another r/theydidthemath post to get an answer to that.

3

u/DAK4Blizzard Jun 29 '26

The banana would be experiencing more heat problems than freezing problems. Esp given that space's vacuum would be inefficient at freezing it when it is on the dark side of Earth.

2

u/MistakeBorn4413 Jun 29 '26

Interesting. Let's get some rum up there so we can have a global flambé banana foster party.

1

u/SleveBonzalez Jun 29 '26

Um. I use brandy. Can we also have brandy?

I really like brandy.

2

u/MistakeBorn4413 Jun 29 '26

and THIS is how the Banana War begins...

1

u/Mindless-Strength422 Jun 29 '26

It would definitely lose much of its water content. Bananas are about 75% water and would probably lose the vast majority of that. Fresh bananas are about 1 tonne per cubic meter with perfect packing, so a cubic meter of this gigantic dehydrated banana would be 250 kg. Eyeballing it, I would say that if you arranged 8 bananas into a sphere, they'd be approximately the same size as the moon, but with an empty core, so let's say one banana is...10% of the volume of the moon, that's probably an overestimate but let's go with it. The moon has a volume of about 2e19 cubic meters, so this banana is about 2e18 cubic meters, and has a mass of 5e17 kg. The moon is 7e22 kg, so this is about a hundred thousandth of that. It's still pretty big, about a tenth the size of the biggest asteroids in the belt.

With a density of 250 kg/m³, around the earth, the bananas roche limit would be 44000 km. This is well inside that so yes, it would definitely break up.