Why life didn't evolve in the Moon?

Question

I found this from an Yahoo Answer:

The generally accepted theory is that the Earth was nearly destroyed by a Mars-sized asteroid early in its formation. The result was that a good chunk of the Earth's early crust was blown back into space and formed an orbiting cloud of debris around the Earth. Then according to the theory, the debris coalesced into the Moon.

I am actually self-learning person, studying astronomy for myself just for extra knowledge. So, the Moon was separated from earth, so how come the life only evolve in Earth not in the Moon?

I heard from a news that Bits of Ancient Earth Hidden on the Moon. Material from Earth's first billion years may remain in moon meteorites.

Thanks for Answering & taking a look at my question

Answer 1

It doesn't exactly matter how the moon formed, but that the moon didn't iniate a cycle to begin life mainly because it has no water and basically no atmosphere (not to mention numerous smaller conditions like gravity and the moons geology).  The fact that the Earth originally had water formed the basis of life, and that life (mainly cyanobacteria) released free oxygen into the oceans.  It started to combine with certain metal ions (primarily iron) that were dissolved in the ocean. The resulting compounds were not water soluble. So, they precipitated out of the water creating banded iron deposits which are the primary sources of iron ore. (This process quite literally caused the oceans to rust.) It took the bacteria until about 1.8 billion years ago to remove all of these ion from the ocean. Once these ions had been removed, then the levels of oxygen could begin to build up in the oceans and diffuse from there into the atmosphere. So, it was about 1.8 billion years ago that the atmosphere become oxidizing.

Answer 2

Regardless of what others are telling you, there's absolutely no reason that some form of extremely primitive life, like single-celled microbes, do not or can not exist on the moon. Although water, amino acids, etc., have been crucial to life emerging and flourishing on Earth, they are not positively crucial.

Answer 3

The moon is small, meaning it has less gravity.  It doesn't have enough gravity to retain an atmosphere, so any air that could have been on the moon long ago leaked off into space.  Without an atmosphere to hold it down water will boil away, again going off into space.  No water, no atmosphere, the moon is missing two of the things critical for life.

Answer 4

since there as so many informative answers, the only thing i can think of that wasn't said is that is not it's purpose.

Answer 5

How do you know life did not evolve in the moon?Nobody knows. I'm open to ideas. If one theory forced us to believe that humans decended from apes(probably earthworms) then we can each create our own theories wouldn't you say. They have no proof so do we. I think it is fair to say life came from the moon, the sea, the whatever.

Answer 6

For one, the Earth is more than 80 times more massive than the moon. Because a celestial body's atmosphere is held solely by the force of gravity, the moon's lower mass severely hinders its ability to retain gases and maintain an atmosphere. In fact, the moon's atmosphere is so thin that its weight is only about 10 tonnes! What's more, these gases are not really retained by the moon's gravity so much as they are continually replenished by the outgassing of rocks. No atmosphere, no respiration, no life.

A related issue is pressure. Without an atmosphere, the ambient pressure on the surface of the moon is that of space, which approximates a vacuum. Very, very few organisms can withstand the vacuum of space, since water cannot exist as a liquid at this pressure, at any temperature. Any water that was jettisoned to the moon at the time of the impact event would have instantly vaporized, and, the moon being unable to retain it, dissipated into space. No water, no chemistry, no life.

And that brings us to the third issue: temperature. Because the moon has no atmosphere to trap heat, relatively little heat is absorbed from sunlight. The temperature on the surface of the moon, even in broad daylight, is about -100°C, on average. At night, it drops to as low as -200°C. Clearly, this is too cold for almost all lifeforms.

Although much of the material from the moon came from the Earth, the impact jettisoned far more of the Earth's crust and mantle than core, meaning that the moon has a much thicker crust and mantle, and much thinner core than does the Earth. The moon's core is about 20% the size of the entire moon; the Earth's core is about 50% the size of the entire Earth. The Earth's core generates a vast amount of heat, something the moon's core is less able to do.

On a related note, the Earth's core acts as a dynamo, generating a small but very important magnetic field. The Earth's magnetic field shields the planet from harmful solar radiation, to the tremendous benefit of surface-dwelling organisms. Because the moon's core is so small, the magnetic field it generates is almost negligible, at about 1% the strength of the Earth's. Without an atmosphere (particularly an ozone layer) or a magnetic field to shield the moon's surface from solar radiation, it is a dangerous place.

Answer 7

Life is pretty rare, even in places that are hospitable to it. The Earth is a great environment for life, and life doesn't just spontaneously appear anywhere.  Looking at the life we see, life could have begun only once in the entire universe (though that's not likely), so the fact that life didn't form on an airless almost waterless rock with high temperature variations is really nothing that needs to be explained.

Answer 8

Mostly excellent answers so far.  Main things missing from moon IMO.

1. Atmosphere, to breathe and possibly regulated temperature that is hotter than liquid nitrogen.

2.  A magnetic core.  To create a stable temperature to allow for an atmosphere, weather, complex molecules, techtonic shifts.

Io, the moon of Jupiter, has possible life, with volcanoes, because of the tidal stress of Jupiter. Earth is too small to do the same thing. Nothing but emptyness, unfortunately, on the moon.

Answer 9

Well actually this is a little off topic of what you are asking, but during the apollo missions, a miraculous discovery was made regardin the strength and willpower of life. Apparently some Earthly infestations on one of the landers caused some microbes to go onto the moon. When the appolo missions were n process, these microbes were still present and were in large growing numbers. This suggests that life is tough and once it starts to begin, it is really hard to make it stop or to get rid of it. Earth, due to its massive volume when compared to the moon, can retain an atmosphere that could sustain important gasses that kept relatively stable temperatures and provided the ingridients for respiration and photosynthesis. Also because the Earth was able to hold water due to its gravity and atmosphere, along with the fact that Earth had many chemicals mixed in the water due to the contant churning of the tides (the moon was much closer than it is now, and it affected the tides soo much that it stirred the water like fizzing soda) the neccesary ingredients of life were forged for the first time, including lipids, protiens, nucleic acids, and carbohydrates.

Answer 10

The moon has no atmosphere, no air to breathe, and maybe water but if there's no air, how can life survive?

Answer 11

there is life in the moon.

thats why nasa wont go back.

the government lies.. IT LIIIIIIIIIES! [invader zim voice]

i dont really know the answer o.o [of course i dont, no one does]

ask the mayans.

i would answer soo much better if i didnt write a whole paragraph about the planetx stuff

Answer 12

I assume you're talking about life evolving AFTER the Moon coalesced into it's present form?

For a start, its either too hot or too cold. Without an atmosphere or liquid water oceans to insulate the temperature the moon against temperature changes, it gets very inhospitable. The surface temperature is about 300 Fahrenheit (around -200 Celsius) during the night and to 200+ Fahrenheit (120+ Celsius) during the day.

How can any biochemical system evolve a metabolism to adapt to these radical changes?

So far, the life we know on Earth (Terrestrial) all depend upon contained within being in a aqueous (water) solution. The temperature on the lunar polar regions is far below the freezing point, so all the water avaliable has frozen up, and is not available to sustain or contain life.

We could still be wrong - there may still be a few simple native Lunans microorganisms up there?

Answer 13

the earth was just a volcano and magma during that time, and theres no core in the moon    -core = no gravity no gravity = no atmoshpere no atmoshpere = no life

Answer 14

I agree with another answer in that " how do you know it did not " ? Also, we will never go back (did we ever really go in the first place ?) there because we are not wanted by the vastly superior inhabitants who are already there !