If the moon was blown up, or ceased to exist somehow, how would life on earth be affected? Obviously no moonlite, and no tides I guess. Would it be catastrophic for us?
Well, you wouldn’t have to lie about “enjoying moonlit walks on the beach” on on-line dating profiles.
The celestical ramifications? Pretty minimal. Substantially reduced tides (the tidal forces rendered by the Sun are about half of that from the Moon), and there’s be no additive spring tides and not the variation over the Moon’s orbital period, so tides would be consistant from day to day. That might muck up intertidal ecologies, and would lessen the effectiveness of tide generators. It would also affect creatures who depend on Moonlight for hunting or functioning at night, or Lunar periods for biorhythmic timing, but the effect of the Moon is popularly overstated in this regard.
Unless the Moon or significant chunks of it fell to Earth it’s not going to be a catastrophic change. We’d have to throw away serious amounts of Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles ouerve, though. Perhaps it would be all for the best…
Stranger
Well if it were blown up, it would make for some interesting shadow casts as the Earth tilts throughout its seasons, as we would likely have rings around Earth like Saturn does. Probably nothing huge though.
Apocalypto.
The calyto used to be one of my favorite rides at Cedar Point. No longer there.
Mmmmmm… Salt Water Taffy.
That is “The Calypso”. Sorry, I’m a fuckup.
Periods, would truly be periodic.
Which leads to a biological question…truly for alll the great poetry and waxing, would there also be a be a true bioaffect?
Wait less than a million years and the Earth will flip over. When (because you have abolished the Moon) the Earth’s axis of rotation points right at the sun, life here will get very severly challenged. One hemisphere will be constantly illuminated, and get great heating; the other will be in shadow and its only heat will be from the unimaginagably powerful wind from the bright side. That wind will last for the short time that the atmosphere takes to settle as solid on the dark side. Earth will then move into a long period where life must retrench.
If the moon just disappeared by magic, every tidal stress on the Earth would suddenly be released. Not only would this cause massive tsunamis worldwide, but since there are tidal forces even on solid land (not noticeable as we have nothing to reference them to, but land levels rise by several feet when the Moon is overhead), releasing these forces would set off every fault line on the planet, causing widespread earthquakes and volcanic activity. Not a fun time to be alive, but you probably wouldn’t stay alive for long if that’s any consolation.
If the moon was just blown up without destroying its mass, things would be less drastic. Eventually lunar tides would disappear as the debris settled into a ring about the Earth, but this would take time and I suspect the effects on Earth would be minimal.
I know you’re a smart guy, but that site… I couldn’t read the first sentence before closing the tab…
Please tell me it’s a smartguy joke.
Doesn’t the gravitational interaction help to heat the Earths core?
The moon helps stabilize the earths rotation, take it away and the earth could just spin any ol’ way it feels like.
Day/night and seasons would change, causing mass dieoffs of plant and animal life.
Obligatory reference to What If the Moon Didn’t Exist? Voyages to Earths That Might Have Been, by Neil F. Comins.
All other projected outcomes pale in comparison to what I’m about to offer.
The disappearance of the moon could very well solve the global warming crisis.
To lose all that mass would definitely lighten up the total mass in our vicinity and its contribution to the gravitational force that attracts us to the sun. The earth’s tangential speed and reduced gravitational radial force would put us in a higher orbit and thus experience less solar energy. Absent any relevant mathematical skills on my part, I would even be concerned that the earth would escape the solar system.
Perhaps some mathematical genius could relieve my anxiety and tell me where earth would end up.
Just about exactly where it is now. The earth and moon revolve around the center of gravity of the mass of the two systems. But the moon weighs about 1/81 of the earth. So that center point is 1/81 of 240,000 miles, or still inside the earth’s sphere. There’ll be a wobble as the earth shifts but that will soon settle down because the sun is a million times more massive than the earth and dominates the relationship.
Sometimes, when I’m feeling out of sorts at work and not really able to make sense of iptables or networking protocols, I just go to Dr. Gene Ray and read a few paragraphs about the Timecube, and it perks me right up. 4 Earth corners rotate 4 Time corners -
for 4 simultaneous day rotation of Earth -
equating the principle of a 4 pole motor.
Academic bastards will deny the obvious.
Americans are EVIL for ignoring Cubicism.
Acknowledge the 4 days or you die evil.
Do not pass this point without the 4 days. How can you not feel enlightened after reading that? 
Nope. Radioactive decay is almost exclusively responsible for the Earth’s internal heating. Jupiter’s moon, Io, the most volcanically active body in the Solar System, is heated by the tidal forces between Jupiter, Europa, and Ganymede, but that is due to it’s extreme proximity to the gas giant and the resonances of the other moons.
kanicbird, permit me to introduce you to the concept of conservation of angular momentum. Planets without a significant moon–Venus, Mars–don’t seem to have any difficulty in maintaining stable rotation.
The sudden and inexplicable disappearance the Earth’s Moon would result in a slight change in the mass properties of the system, but the Earth-Moon barycenter (their center of mass and common origin of rotation) is still well below the Earth’s surface, so the change in system interia and velocity would be only a fraction of a percent. The scenerio postulated by Alive At Both Ends is conceivable in such a case, but I suspect that he’s overstating the case; earthquakes and tsunamis are possible, but the case for increased volcanism I find less likely. Of course, the Moon isn’t going to spontaneously undergo a total and inexplicable existance failure; it’s going to be blown up by a mad scientist or knocked out of orbit by a giant explosion of the fusion pile on the farside and wander around the universe or something, so there’ll be at least some graduation of the mass change.
Okay, seriously…are you people on crack? The average orbital speed of the Earth (or more specifically, the Earth-Moon system) about Sol is 29.8 km/s, and the average orbital speed of the Moon with respect to Earth is about 1.02 km/s. Given that the Earth outmasses the Moon by about 81.3:1, you have to get down to the fourth decimal place before the change in momentum even becomes significant. (Whether it would speed up or slow down depends upon which direction it is pointing when it flings off into space or disappears into the aether; total momentum still has to be conserved.) Solar escape velocity at Earth’s orbit is about 43 km/s; not only would the Earth not escape from the planetary system, even the Moon couldn’t do so without a lot more additional momentum than can be provided by the Earth. We’re not going anywhere. (I’m not even going to talk to the global warming issue except to note that small variations in orbital distance have little to do with atmospheric behavior; from a celestial mechanics standpoint, climate is a result of the rakish 23.5 degree ecliptical inclination of Earth.)
In any case, a change in mass alone has no effect on tangential speed or “gravitational radial force”; an object in orbit at a particular instantaneous velocity and direction has an orbital speed and path that is independent of its mass. (We’re assuming, as is the case in the Earth-Sol system, that the mass m of the orbiting body fulfills the assumption M>>m, where M is the mass of the central body. Unrestricted 2-body dynamics with arbitrary masses are a somewhat more complicated, and n-body dynamics of similar masses are ferociously complex. Thank Og for Matlab.)
Stranger
Don’t be too hard on kanicbird, the theory alluded to has some currency. I can’t find a very good cite; but there’s a mention in a BBC artcicle here :
“Laskar’s team has shown that the tilt of Mars on its axis can vary between 15 degrees and 40 degrees, largely because of its lack of a significant moon. By contrast, the Earth varies little from its tilt of 23.5 degrees.”
It’s hypothesized that this kind of wobbling leads to climate instability that might be a bit too quick and drastic for evolution to keep up with. I can’t prove it’s true, but kanicbird’s comment is not exactly in the same class as, say, suggesting that we can solve the energy crisis with perpetual motion machines.
The results would be catastrophic according to this book, which is really interesting:
What If There Were No Moon by Steve Parker
The mathematician Alexander Abian was a passionate advocate of blowing up the moon.