10 Dumbest Things In Star Trek Into Darkness
3. Take It To The [Roche] Limit
In the 10 Dumbest Things In Star Trek (2009) I groused about how lots of TV and filmed science fiction portrays planets in preposterously close quarters. Into Darkness takes the cake in this regard, as it portrays the Klingon planet Qo'noS effectively kissing a shattered moon (maybe Praxis, maybe not).
Planets can only remain spheres/spheroids if they are far enough apart that the tidal forces of their gravitational interactions don’t tear them both apart, or the gravity of the more massive doesn’t shred the lesser. That distance is called the Roche Limit. Outside it: intact body. Inside it: rubble or rings.
For that Klingon moon to not Moonfall right down its orbital velocity would have to be crazy fast, and the chunks trailing off behind it would possess lower orbital velocities than those skimming the atmosphere. They’d never line up as seen in the film. Unless that moon was hurled directly into that atmosphere-grazing orbit, the tidal forces from Qo’noS would have long ago reduced it to short-lived rings as it gradually moved closer and closer.
The effect wouldn’t be limited to the moon. Qo’noS itself would be distorted by the intense tidal forces and end up as molten as the inside of that supervolcano on Nibiru. Even a million of Spock’s dumb “super ice cube” cold fusion gizmos wouldn’t fix that!