In short: everything will be different! The moon keeps us in balance by stabilizing the fluctuations of the earth’s axis and thus making life on earth possible in the first place. The temperature fluctuations would be considerable and would be between 0 and 85 degrees celsius. Dead zones would develop: the equatorial region would sink into perpetual ice and the polar regions would become heat ovens. The continents in today’s temperate latitudes would be exposed to enormous temperature fluctuations between 25 and 45 degrees celsius within a few months. So, what would change on earth without the moon?
Without the moon, earth would have no reliable seasons
Because the moon stabilizes the earth’s axis, without it, the earth’s axis would spin violently every few million years. With devastating effects on the climate. Researchers have calculated that without a moon, the earth’s axis could sometimes tip by almost 90 degrees. Then the North Pole could very quickly lie in the tropics, and that would mean that each half of the earth would have full sun for half a year, and then cold, darkest night for half a year. The moon, on the other hand, keeps the earth’s axis in position to a certain extent, so that such extreme conditions cannot exist.
Animals wouldn’t evolve to live on land
Because the moon brings us ebb and flow, and thus also the flood areas on the coast, in the transition between water and land. Large areas are flooded twice a day and occasionally fall dry. These transitional areas played an important role in evolution. In these areas amphibians have evolved and later crawled ever further on land. From these animals lizards, dinosaurs and mammals eventually evolved. Without the moon, ebb and flow would be much weaker, and all these floodplains would not have existed.
Days on earth would be shorter without the moon
Today the earth needs 24 hours to rotate once on its axis. In the early days of earth, it spinned four times as fast. Accordingly, a day only lasted 6 hours. It was the moon that slowed earth down. Due to the tides that it triggers, through ebb and flow and all this back and forth sloshing around on earth, the earth loses rotating energy constantly and, as a result, turns ever more slowly.
Without the moon it would not only be dark at night, but pitch dark, every night. Only the stars could still shine our way. In other words, without the moon, the earth would be lonely a lonely planet.
The moon is moving away
The moon was formed about 4.5 billion years ago. Every year the moon moves away from earth by about 3.8 centimeters. At this rate, it will take billions of years to affect earth. This phenomenon has to do with the strong gravitational pull the moon has on Earth.
The moon moves not only water masses, but also land masses. Due to the deformation of the earth and corresponding variations in the earth’s gravitational field, angular momentum is exchanged. The earth continuously loses angular momentum and thus rotational energy, while the moon gains angular momentum and rotational energy from the earth to the same extent and moves further away from it in its orbit.
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