[ibrow]

Thanks for that. Quite a thought. Hopefully this will never happen - am assuming that the Earth has more chance of being hit than the moon (the moon being smaller and faster)?

But would the nights be totally dark? I've experienced a lot of nights out on a boat on a moonless night and the stars provide a (relatively) large amount of light on their own.

[T-hawk]

The Moon isn't faster. The velocities you care about for Solar System impacts are sun-relative. The Earth and Moon have essentially the same velocity relative to the sun, since they orbit it together. The Moon moves a bit slower at new phase and faster at full phase because its Earth-relative velocity subtracts from or adds to its Sun-relative velocity, but the former is 1 km/sec and the latter is 30 km/sec, small potatoes.

As for who gets hit; Earth's mass is 81 times that of the Moon so it attracts objects 81 times as strongly. Really, the Moon would only get hit if Earth already pulled an object into a collision course or near-miss and the Moon just happened to get in the way at the right time. Earth has 4x the diameter so presents 16x the cross-sectional target that the Moon does.

[Achshar]

hmm well they do give some light but it would not be nearly as bright as our beloved moon :)