• Question: What would happen if there was no moon?

    Asked by snowpea to Jen on 13 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Jen Machin

      Jen Machin answered on 13 Mar 2015:

      Good question 🙂 This isn’t my area of science but I’ll do my best to answer it! Tom might be able to help you more with this one 🙂

      If the moon was taken away overnight, the oceans would change a lot, especially the tides. Animals would lose some of their night vision because the light from the moon helps with this – it would be extremely dark at night! Our days would also get a lot shorter.

Comments

  • Photo: Tom

    Tom commented on :

    And as if by magic I appear!

    So the Moon is responsible for the tides on Earth. So without the moon the tides we experience would be tiny (about 40% of the size). Night would also be far far darker than it currently is. The moon reflects a huge amount of sunlight back at the earth so night time isn’t too dark.

    The major thing people would notice however is how long a day would be. The moon has effectively put the brakes on Earth ever since it formed and our rotation has slowly but surely been slowing down to the point where we are now (1 rotation is 24 hours). But without the moon our day would be only 6 or 7 hours long! Which would mean you would literally spend ‘all day’ at school 😛

    For more info
    http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2013/08/08/the-top-5-things-wed-miss-if-we-didnt-have-a-moon/