A Larg Meteor..

[kermit911]

If a large enough Meteor was to hit are moon, and take a nice chunck out of it, lets say 1/5 of the moon. What would some of the side effects be? If any.

[gerkin]

Not much - probably wipe out all life on earth

[qapmoc]

As the only effect on the earth would probably be to reduce the tides it would not make much difference to us, provide that is, that all the pieces move away from the Earth and not towards it!!

[jake-the-peg]

To take that big a chunk out the asteroid would have to be enormous so it's pretty hypothetical although the moon was probably formed by an impact of this type with the Eart early in it's formation.

So you might think well would this give the moon a moon of it's own?

If we look around the solar system we don't see any examples of this (OK the Saturn system is pretty complex and you can argue for all sorts there).

From this youcan make a fair bet that one of two things would happen, the moon's gravity would hold the two lumps together or more probably Earth would gain a second moon.