Without the Moon, there would have been no moon landings, which would have left a lot of conspiracy theorists with nothing to do.
And there’s nothing worse than a conspiracy theorist with time on his hands …
When a planet is on its side like this (as Uranus currently is) one pole does not perpetually face the sun. Rather one pole faces the sun at one point in the orbit while the other pole faces the sun at the opposite end of the orbit. At the halfway points you’d get half day and half night. At intermediate points, you get intermediate effects.
No solar eclipses. Without the moon, what else would there have been to freak out the ancients besides the odd comet here and there? Nothing as quite as effective as a total solar eclipse, I always say.
The moon will, eventually, make for a great space-station or jumping off point when humanity begins to branch out from just this puny marble. With low gravity, no atmosphere, and many raw resources to mine, It will make it much easier to begin elaborate missions from there, rather than from the earth.
…ask the astrology enthusiasts 
Although this makes sense, I couldn’t find a source that confirms the claim the other planets *wobble more * than the Earth does.
I’m not saying the claim is false – I’m just wondering whether someone has a cite that confirms it.
Thanks.
Okay, I just found this:
Earth’s wobble linked to extinctions
I’m hoping for something a bit more specific.
Nice way to deflect suspicion, Jonathan CHAnce! Mind if we check your garage for giant lasers?
I also meant to mention that Isaac Asimov wrote a book called The Tragedy of the Moon that included a chapter called The Triumph of the Moon that is quoted almost in full here. (That site’s right to reprint virtually the entire essay is questionable, IMHO, and I have no idea what the site’s creator is on about before and after the quoted material, but since the whole piece is available online, I might as well cite it.)
Asimov’s thesis in this article is that the moon, by creating strong tides, led to the evolution of humans (as others here have said); by presenting a visual representation for early calendars, led to the development of math and science; and with its changing phases, led to the development of astronomy and therefore space travel.
I have necessarily abbreviated these concepts nearly to the point of incomprehensibility, but read the essay: Asimov makes a pretty good case.
That looks interesting, but I’ve just reached this point:
Is it still debated whether the moon was created out of a collision between the earth and another body (which would AFAIK place the event far before the evolution of land life, at least as we know of)?
I don’t think so. I’m no expert, but the last I heard, the collision theory is most widely accepted. But Asimov wrote the piece in 1972, when there was not as much certainty on that point.
he past
I have read it in the past, and Asimov makes a good case, although hardly definitive.
As I recall, one thing the Moon is believed to do for Earth is keep the interior hotter, due to heating from tidal forces. This has kept various geological cycles going strong; without it, all the mountains or even continents might have worn down, or most of the atmosphere been locked up in rocks, or something similar.
I can’t find a cite, but I recall Mars being used as an example of a planet tipping over because it lacks a large moon. There are craters on Mars caused by captured objects that fell to the surface; since they orbited Mars for a long time, they hit at the equator usually, and leave a strip of elongated craters there. Except that there’s an older strip, which appears to have been the equator at one time, but Mars tipped over.
“What has the moon ever done for us?”
Isn’t it where cheese and crackers are from?
Their reliance on the moon has only arisen because there is a moon - so if the moon were to disappear, that would certainly be upsetting for a lot of organisms (even leaving aside any physical upheaval caused by the its removal), but if the moon had simply never been, and if life had still arisen, then there would probably still be nocturnal organisms - they’d just have different ways of finding their way around.
Tidal zones are pretty major players in the ecology of both the land and the sea. Life would get along without them, but there would be a little less of it.
ENOUGH with all this “what has the moon done for us” bullshit. Damnit, what have you done for the moon?
What the heck does it want, drunken midnight orgies and blood sacrifices? If that’s it, just say so, because I’m all over that one!
Personally, I feel that an occasional orgy under the full moon is not that much to ask as a sign of moon appreciation. Sorry for the stridency of my previous post.
No, don’t apologize; we all know the moon makes us a little crazy. Wine’s on me at the orgy, okay?
No. Tidal energy is insignificant compared to the thermal energy–created by radioactive decay of uranium, thorium, and potassium–which drives the plate tectonics cycle. Tidal forces do contribute to erosion, at least in coastal areas, and the process of regular tidal exchange helps bring in food, take out waste, and oxygenate the water which is critical to litoral sea life, and thus likely necessary for the development of terrestrial lifeforms; however, they have an almost insigificant impact on the Earth’s temperature.
Whether the Moon has helped to stabilize the Earth’s axial tilt is debatable. It’s true that Jacques Laskar has claimed that the Earth’s Moon helps stabilize the system from his claims of chaotic interaction between planets, but despite having been jumped on by the pop sci press a couple of times in the last decade this is not a widely accepted theory. It is possible that the Moon offers some stabilizing force, and it does appear that some other planets change orientation. Mars is most notable in this regard, but the historical orientation of Venus, the planet most Earth-like in composition, is a mystery to us owing to the lack of persistant or visible surface features.
The impact hypothesis is almost universally accepted owing to a lack of any other credible explanation as how Earth could otherwise capture such a large body in a permanently stable orbit. This begs the question of what happened to the other mass–an object roughly the size of Mars), although at least part of it likely comprised the nickel/iron rich Near Earth asteroids which are frequently ejected from orbit.
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