Thanks to tectonic activity, there are no truly old rocks on Earth. Losing the Moon would also mean losing a wealth of information about the young Earth. But for animals that have evolved over millions of years to live in sync with seasons, it might be hard for them to adapt, even over what would seem to us like a long timescale. The change in Earth’s tilt would happen gradually, though, so we wouldn’t notice it instantly or likely even within our lifetime. At a certain angle, “Some places on the planet would hardly ever see the sun at all, and at others the sun would be overhead for months on end.” “Everything we know about the seasons would be completely out of whack,” says Paul Sutter, astrophysicist at the Flatiron Institute. Without that steadying hand, Earth would wobble much more, dramatically affecting the planet’s seasons and climate. The Moon also holds Earth’s 23.5-degree tilt fairly steady. Without the Moon’s presence all those years, we’d still be spinning much faster - and feeling even more like there weren’t enough hours in a day. However, if the Moon had disappeared billions of years ago, our rotation today would be very different.Įarly on, the Earth had 4-hour rotations, which the Moon slowly and persistently slowed to the 24-hour days we know now. Though if that increase stopped tomorrow, it wouldn’t be very noticeable on our human timescales. The pull of the Moon currently increases the length of a day by about two milliseconds every century. Newly hatched turtles use the Moon’s light to find their way to the ocean - and they’re struggling enough as it is, thanks to artificial streetlights that lure them in the wrong direction.Īn errant Moon would also affect Earth’s motion about its axis. Animals like moths have evolved over millions of years to navigate by the light of the Moon and stars. While a moonless sky wouldn’t affect most of our day-to-day lives, it would upend the lifestyles of many nocturnal animals.
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