# What if the Earth had no Moon? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 13, 2015, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-earth-had-no-moon/740299 "2015-12-13T03:01:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![TSBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@TSBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TSBG)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2015, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-earth-had-no-moon/740299/1 "2015-12-13T03:01:32Z")
If the young Earth had not suffered the impact that resulted in the creation of the Moon, what would our planet be like? Is there any way to know? Are tidal forces still thought to be instrumental to evolution, and without moon tides would life have evolved? I’m aware of the Asimov essay, but that was only about the effect on human culture. Also, this might be more IMHO, we’ll see, but wondering if there’s any concrete science to form the basis of speculation. ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2015, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-earth-had-no-moon/740299/2 "2015-12-13T03:03:39Z")
Women’s periods might be timed differently. What effects that would have, wow, it is hard to even speculate. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2015, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-earth-had-no-moon/740299/3 "2015-12-13T03:13:26Z")
One theory of the origin of life involves organic chemicals having the opportunity to react in relatively close contact in tidal pools. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2015, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-earth-had-no-moon/740299/4 "2015-12-13T03:37:24Z")
[If We Had No Moon: An essay by Bernard Foing](http://www.astrobio.net/topic/exploration/moon-to-mars/if-we-had-no-moon/) [What if the Moon Didn’t Exist?: Voyages to Earths That Might Have Been, by Neil F. Comins](http://www.amazon.com/What-Moon-Didnt-Exist-Voyages/dp/1475930941/ref=la_B0036YOZ1C_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1449977776&sr=1-5) ---
**Author:** ![RadicalPi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/radicalpi/32/9806_2.png) [@RadicalPi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RadicalPi)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2015, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-earth-had-no-moon/740299/5 "2015-12-13T04:03:49Z")
Well, the date of Easter would be a lot different, that’s for sure. ---
**Author:** ![buddha\_david](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ee7513/32.png) [@buddha\_david](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buddha_david)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2015, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-earth-had-no-moon/740299/6 "2015-12-13T04:25:12Z")
Werewolves wouldn’t exist. Columbus wouldn’t have impressed the Native Americans by predicting a lunar eclipse. Andy Williams would have nothing to sing about. Also, [The Master speaks.](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3194/what-would-earth-be-like-without-the-moon) ---
**Author:** ![keeper0](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b19c9b/32.png) [@keeper0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/keeper0)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2015, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-earth-had-no-moon/740299/7 "2015-12-13T05:15:27Z")
In the book “Rare Earth”, the authors (Ward and Brownlee) argue that the presence of the moon acts as a stabilizing force on the earth’s axial tilt. Complex life would be less likely to evolve if the axial tilt were erratic because the climate could change more rapidly than evolutionary mutations could keep up. I don’t have the expertise to confirm or refute their arguments, but they made sense when I read them. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2015, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-earth-had-no-moon/740299/8 "2015-12-13T06:57:42Z")
> [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > Women’s periods might be timed differently. What effects that would have, wow, it is hard to even speculate. Actually, there’s no evidence the women’s menstrual cycles are lunar-based. Of all the mammals, only a very few have 29-day periods. (Asimov had an essay on that, too. The only other mammal he identified as having a 29-day period was the platypus.) ETA: > [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > One theory of the origin of life involves organic chemicals having the opportunity to react in relatively close contact in tidal pools. We’d still have solar tides, sufficient to produce tide pools. Smaller ones, but they’d still be around. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2015, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-earth-had-no-moon/740299/9 "2015-12-13T15:08:01Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Actually, there’s no evidence the women’s menstrual cycles are lunar-based. Of all the mammals, only a very few have 29-day periods. > > (Asimov had an essay on that, too. The only other mammal he identified as having a 29-day period was the platypus.) Plus it’s not as if that “29” is carved in stone. It definitely doesn’t apply to all women, and there wouldn’t be so much fuss about the discusion of whether women living/working together synch sometimes or it’s just happenstance once in a blue moon if you could take it for granted that women will, indeed, be in synch. I’m not even sure if the 29 is an actual average for any specific population or just a number that someone plucked out of a mythical sleeve. ---
**Author:** ![sbunny8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@sbunny8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sbunny8)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2015, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-earth-had-no-moon/740299/10 "2015-12-13T18:36:40Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Plus it’s not as if that “29” is carved in stone. It definitely doesn’t apply to all women, and there wouldn’t be so much fuss about the discusion of whether women living/working together synch sometimes or it’s just happenstance once in a blue moon if you could take it for granted that women will, indeed, be in synch. I’m not even sure if the 29 is an actual average for any specific population or just a number that someone plucked out of a mythical sleeve. It’s 28, not 29. [http://www.womenshealth.gov/publications/our-publications/fact-sheet/menstruation.html#b](http://www.womenshealth.gov/publications/our-publications/fact-sheet/menstruation.html#b) All the oral contraceptives I’ve ever seen come in packs of 28. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2015, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-earth-had-no-moon/740299/11 "2015-12-13T18:41:34Z")
Either Discovery or TLC had a program called “If We Had No Moon” a few years ago. > **[If We Had No Moon](https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/if-we-had-no-moon/)** > > Without the moon, humans wouldn't exist. Life, if it had started at all, would be in the earliest stages of evolution. Days would last four hours, winds... Go from there. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2015, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-earth-had-no-moon/740299/12 "2015-12-13T20:51:02Z")
Listen– [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/T1GNiEbOgo0/maxresdefault.jpg "If We Had No Moon") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1GNiEbOgo0) ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2015, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-earth-had-no-moon/740299/13 "2015-12-13T21:42:03Z")
Aside: > [@buddha\_david](#): > > Also, [The Master speaks.](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3194/what-would-earth-be-like-without-the-moon) Obligatory nit-pick: > [@Cecil Adams](#): > > Without this rather violent development we might have ended up like Venus, where life is only imaginable by Ray Bradbury. Isaac Asimov imagined life on Venus too: _The Weapon Too Dreadful to Use_, 1939, short story. [Stubby Wiki article with synopsis:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weapon_Too_Dreadful_to_Use) > [@](#): > > The people of Earth have colonised Venus, despite the intelligent species native to the planet, who are treated as inferiors with no rights (reminiscent of apartheid and Jim Crow laws on Earth). > > One of the Venusians shows his Earthman friend the ruins of an ancient city, where they discover details of an ancient weapon, apparently abandoned millennia before as being too dreadful to actually use, . . . TL;DR: The weapon casts a brain-disconnecting ray, capable of targeting narrow angle (a single individual) to wide-angle enough to target the entire Earth, that disconnects the brain from the body, leaving victims in a total and irreversible state of Locked In Syndrome. And, despite the misleading story title, the Venusians _did_ use it in their battle for independence. [Full text of story.](https://c3jemx2ube5v5zpg.onion.to/?document=view&id=194§ion=11) ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2015, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-earth-had-no-moon/740299/14 "2015-12-14T06:27:56Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > We’d still have solar tides, sufficient to produce tide pools. Smaller ones, but they’d still be around. Much smaller. Currently, solar tides are about half the size of lunar ones. When the Earth was young and life first came into being, the Moon was much closer to the Earth and lunar tides were something like 50 or 100 times larger than now. What effect, if any, that had on the origin of life is unknown, but that’s because we don’t know how life originated. We also don’t know exactly how close the Moon was to the Earth at that time, but that probably doesn’t make much difference. The tides were huge and a small change in the Earth-Moon difference would not change that significantly. There’s some species that use the moon or its tides for various things. Off the top of my head, corals time their spawning to coincide with certain tides. I’m sure there’s others, but nothing comes to mind right now. ---
**Author:** ![UncleFred](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/f0a364/32.png) [@UncleFred](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleFred)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2015, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-earth-had-no-moon/740299/15 "2015-12-15T02:41:42Z")
Related topic from The Master > **[I plan to destroy the moon. What effect would this have on the earth?](https://www.straightdope.com/21343496/i-plan-to-destroy-the-moon-what-effect-would-this-have-on-the-earth)** ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2015, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-earth-had-no-moon/740299/16 "2015-12-15T14:29:54Z")
If there was no moon someone on the Dope would be asking “What if the Earth had a moon?”. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2015, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-earth-had-no-moon/740299/17 "2015-12-15T15:03:57Z")
The Apollo program would’ve never happened. ---
**Author:** ![Knowed\_Out](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/knowed_out/32/7380_2.png) [@Knowed\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knowed_Out)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2015, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-earth-had-no-moon/740299/18 "2015-12-16T16:03:44Z")
Neil Stephenson wrote [Seven Eves](http://www.amazon.com/Seveneves-A-Novel-Neal-Stephenson/dp/1501220233), which speculates what happens to Earth when the Moon is mysteriously destroyed. Good read. ---
**Author:** ![Kiber](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kiber/32/317_2.png) [@Kiber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kiber)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2015, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-earth-had-no-moon/740299/19 "2015-12-16T16:26:20Z")
Well - I had believed that the tides were important in the movement of life from the oceans to the land. But [this article](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/moon-life-tides/)supports the notion mentioned above that tides were critical in the development of life itself. However . . . > [@some Paleobiologist](#): > > I suspect that eventually life would have made land without the tides. But the lineages that ultimately gave rise to humans were at first intertidal ---
**Author:** ![Annadroid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/db5fbb/32.png) [@Annadroid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annadroid)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2015, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-earth-had-no-moon/740299/20 "2015-12-16T19:18:39Z")
If the moon were not out there, we would have no romance. lol [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-earth-had-no-moon/740299.md?page=2)