If the Moon disappeared?

Question

If the Moon Just disappeared one day, what Earth changing things would happen?

Answer 1

Well, yes, tides would be much lower, but thee would still be solar tides. This would make the intertidal zone (tide pools) much smaller and would likely drastically diminish the amount of organisms living there. Since a lot of other life uses the intertidal zone to seek food, including humans in many parts, the affect on the planets ecology would definitely be noticeable and might even be severe in some parts. Tides also help circulate water in some estuaries and such, again, lower tides again here would have  a deleterious affect on the environment.

There are also at least some organisms and biological systems that use the Moon as a clock so to speak, while usually things like this have secondary clocks, nonetheless it would cause some organisms problems. Then there's animals that hunt by Moonlight or navigate by moonlight, they would have to adapt. The Moon also serves to protect Earth from some space debris, so there would be more shooting stars and more meteors striking Earth, though we likley wouldn't notice the increase.

So basically, the obvious result would be much lower tides and great stargazing, but there would be a vast but subtle disruption in almost every ecosystem on Earth as organisms that used the Moon in one fashion or another adapted or became extinct. I don't think it would be  a mass extinction event, but I wouldn't want to find out. There are almost certainly ways the Moon effects life on earth that we haven't even discovered yet.

On the plus side, storm surges and such would no longer be magnified by a high tide, so in some cases flooding would be less severe without the Moon.

PS And no more eclipses! And a lot of people make their living studying the Moon, so they would be unemployed.

Answer 2

The obvious difference would be no tides, at least not from the moon. There are 8 major influences on the tides, with the moon being the larges. There is some indication the tides were instrumental in jumpstarting life as we know it. If the moon were to disappear NOW, not much different would happen except for the tides, but if never there in the first place, WE might not be here. Unless, that is, if you believe in creationism in which case the point is moot, since the solar system was MADE that way. The person who says "we would be thrown off orbit, the oceans would be all over the place" is WRONG. A moon is a moon is a moon and other planets have them just not as big as ours. Losing the influence of the moon would actually stabilize the orbit. Right now, the orbit actually looks like a wavy curve (ellipse actually) because of the moon's effect. It is the center of mass of the binary system of the Earth and Moon as a pair which follows the smooth curve of the elliptical orbit, not each of the participants in the binary system.  We would have LESS wobble, and the ellipse would become a much smoother curve as it is with the other planets. As long as we maintained the 23 degree tile, we still would have seasons and pretty much everything, except for much lower tides.

Answer 3

Ocean tides would be much less.

Answer 4

we would be thrown off  orbit, the oceans would be all over the place.

hahaha actually i have no idea.

Answer 5

The most prominent and imediate change would be in the ocean tides.  There are also much smaller ground tides that are virtually unnoticable, but do effect the plates and seismologic events to a degree.  there are also atmospheric tides that would be effected.

The Earth and Moon orbit around each other because the mass of the Earth is much larger than the moon the moon does most of the traveling.  The 2 travel around the sun together, with their combined mass.  If the moon suddenly disappeared that mass be offset slightly and would slightly effect how eliptical our orbit is.