• Question: If there was no moon would we die?

    Asked by to David, Johanna, Linda, Tamas, Tom on 18 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Johanna Fischer

      Johanna Fischer answered on 18 Jun 2014:

      probably not, however the tides would be less strong

    • Photo: Thomas Smith

      Thomas Smith answered on 18 Jun 2014:

      If the moon were to suddenly disappear we probably wouldn’t notice too much. There would still be small tides, but these would be caused by the sun and would always be high in the middle of the day.

      Over longer timescales however, things might not look so good for humans. Over long periods of time (23,000 years) the Earth’s tilt changes gradually between slightly tilted, and not so slightly tilted (this tilt gives us our seasons). The moon helps to stabilise the Earth’s tilt. Without the moon, this tilt would get larger and larger, giving us more and more extreme seasons. Eventually, the Earth would be almost on it’s side and the summer would be too hot for life and the winters would be too cold for life.

      So we actually have the moon to thank for us evolving in the first place. Without the moon, our planet wouldn’t be able to have much living on it.

    • Photo: Linda Cremonesi

      Linda Cremonesi answered on 19 Jun 2014:

      The moon developed from Earth in the early stages of the planet’s life when our planet was just a big blob of magma actually.

      As Tom said the moon is extremely important for our planet because it keeps our planet in a “liveable” state for humans! If there had been no moon since the beginning, probably life would have evolved (if at all) in a different way, so that I doubt that human life would have existed at all.

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