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I have always wondered about this-In Star Trek 6 The Undiscovered Country-a Klingon moon named Praxis had a large explosion that ripped most of it away. In real world terms, what would happen to the rest of the moon, the debri, and it's mother planet?
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Praxis
Thanks
Tim

The remaining moons orbit would experience one of three things,
1: It would either be ejected for the current orbit (sent into space)
2: It will come crashing down onto the parent planet
3: It would end up in an highly unstable orbit until one or two happened.

Depending on the size remaining moon fragment, the moon fragment would solidify it self into roughly spherical shape due to the gravity. I think the lower limit for this to happen is roughly 500km in diameter. If the remaining chunk was smaller then this, the shape would be more of a potato shape, Smaller then 100km and the shape might more or less remain unchanged. There would be too little gravity to shape it into even a rough sphere.

As for the parent planet, there would be so much debris in orbit that it would not be a good place to be. There would be chunks of rock the size of houses hitting the planet every few seconds-minutes for years. For all practical purposes the planet would be a complete loss.

The Praxis's interior was given not homogeneous and the core solid, since the explosion would blast off the entire moon, due to the central deepest event (as it show in the film). With such explosion in a molten core the moon would have been completly destroyed.

Sorta off topic, but Praxis was probably not a moon of the klingon homeworld only a klingon moon in ownership, within klingon territory. The subspace wave from its destruction traveled many light years and probably damaged the homeworld's ozone in much the same fashion.

Incidentally Mandel's Star Charts lists praxis as being some lightyears distant from the Klingon Homeworld as well. Regardless, if Praxis were a moon of Qo'noS and exploded with the force it did, Qo'noS would have a lot more to worry about than just ozone damage.

I don't know about the power of a "sci-fi klingonian explosion", but such event generate practically no critical subspace waves in the distance, if with subspace waves we do intend "no sci-fi" gravitational waves.

Trying to apply real known physics to Star Trek is like a Twinkie. Well, let's say this Twinkie (4" x 1.5") represents the normal amount of junk physics in the all combined SciFi universes. Based upon the Star trek Universe, it would be a Twinkie thirty-five feet long, weighing approximately six hundred pounds.

MKruer wrote:Trying to apply real known physics to Star Trek is like a Twinkie. Well, let's say this Twinkie (4" x 1.5") represents the normal amount of junk physics in the all combined SciFi universes. Based upon the Star trek Universe, it would be a Twinkie thirty-five feet long, weighing approximately six hundred pounds.

I agree, of course; although for such "worlds of thought" is required to be coherent with themselves. More interesting is the question, for example, if the aristotelian world, with his physics, was "sci-fi"; because in this case the "world" may to be "real" and in same time "unreal".

MKruer wrote:Trying to apply real known physics to Star Trek is like a Twinkie. Well, let's say this Twinkie (4" x 1.5") represents the normal amount of junk physics in the all combined SciFi universes. Based upon the Star trek Universe, it would be a Twinkie thirty-five feet long, weighing approximately six hundred pounds.

2 points for that one!