according to the discovery channel, the moon's gravitational pull affects the earth's rotation.
now they found out that the moon is getting further and further away from us.
and in dunno how many thousand years later, the moon will be so far out that our earth's axis will rotate quite peculiarly.
i dunno how to explain the earth's rotational axis here but to give you some idea, imagine the sahara desert having a winter season.

Aside from the rather obvious effects of night visuals, key patterns and habits of animals will go haywire. Many use the moon as an indicator AFAIK. Be it for horseshoe crabs to other animals.

I believe I've heard that the moon affects the tides, thus this will further enhance the destructive factor. By itself, if we consider things, they won't be on such a great magnitude, but however, multiply the things that would be screwed up with each other. You'll get a whole bigger mess than you originally had thought possible without the moon.

Well the first thing we'd notice is the tides.

Secondly the rate of the slowing of the rotation of the Earth will drop quite a bit (but frankly most of us never ever notice that anyway)

This post has been edited by bgeh: Nov 19 2009, 07:06 PM

wait. according to my reading, the moon was what slows the earth rotation down. the earth was rotating way too fast millions of years ago. but the interaction with the moon's gravity was what slows it down gradually until the speed we have today.



wikipedia

anyways, what's the impact of not having tides? does the sea current stop, ceasing the thermohaline circulation in the sea and eventually global freezing ala the day after tomorrow?

a little longer than that

so yes, if the moon would suddenly disappear, the earth would wobble more, causing cataclysmic climate changes

a lot of nocturnal animals will have a hard time to catch prey.
no eclipse.
turtles depend on low tide to lay eggs on beach.
some insects mating behavior depends on moon cycles.

maybe less volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.

And it'll continue slowing it down even more, and the energy goes to the moon, which drifts further away

Unlikely, the tides are not the primary driver of sea currents, it's driven mainly by solar heating (heat not being evenly distributed across the earth)

Actually the moon's gravity effects work to decrease earths rotational speed over millions and billions of years. For example, examination of coral reefs from the cambrian era has shown that days were considerably shorter at that time, something like 23 hours or less, resulting in one year having about 400 days. (Please ask a palaeontologist or some dude from a similar area for details. )
So if you took the moon away, a day's length would simply stay at 24 hours forever (maybe a little differing due to sun's tidal effects on our planet), instead of being 25 hours in a few hundred million years, then 26 hours and so on.

The actually bigger effect would be caused by the fact that earth would keep the tangential speed vector with which it now circles the common mass center of the earth-moon system, which would result in, depending on which point of it's way around earth you would make the moon disappear, some slight increase or decrease in the eccentricity of earth's orbit around the sun. But very slight indeed, since the mass center of earth and moon still lies somewhere WAY below Earth's surface.

And since I very much dislike spherical geometry, I am not going to do a lenghty calculation here about how much the eccentricity of Earth's orbit would change. B)

movie producers also cannot make movies about werewolves. Twilight sequels have to be reproduced. Twilight books won't make sense anymore.

If the moon suddenly disappears..
there will be no tides that comes from the moon. Only the sun will effect the tides.
Animals probably become crazy as they usually do things based on moon.

The earth rotation towards it's axis will get affected.

I'm not in a scholarly mode today, so I like this one =D

1. As one stated, lost of tide
this will affect the biological equibillium.
as many lifeform (animal or plant) do rely on the ocean tide.
massive extinction of many-many species, and this effect will cascade onto other specis

This effect is very tremendous, even if you don't get/feel the impact in short term, but it will come over to everyone one within 1 year.

2. as one mentioned, will affect the earth rotation.
though i guess this effect only will impact over long-long time later.

***
I dont think earth and moon is really "balance".
I forgot either its from article or NatGeo, I read the moon rotation radius onto earth actually is gradually reducing, though in very tiny number/scale.

based on this, the moon eventually may crashed onto the earth some time very very late later, or flung away by the earth gravition on certain circumstances.

dont forget the Earth only has 1 satellite.
Jupiter has 60 or so.



What happens to our moon, might also happen to Jupiters'.

What I'm trying to say is, the universe has been changing for billions of years and after each change, the system equilibrates itself thanks to the laws of physics.
So if you remove the moon (lets say someone somewhere simply plucks it out of the galaxy) its possible that the Earth as well as its surroundings will shift and stabilize back to equilibrium point.


1. longer days?
2. longer year?
3. change in our ecosystem as some animals wont be able to hunt at nite with no moonshine to work with?

just to name a few.

The immediate changes will be very hard to estimate (assuming humans will be able to survive such changes), and so, the phrase "survival of the fittest" comes into play.

a darker night? and no more waves?

herm..we can start with the tidal wave..the ocean hot and cold current..effecting the climate..twisted changes..draughts..and rain..at places it should'nt have..less food...poverty...lots of epidermic...stock changes...and wars...pretty much like that.

This post has been edited by sheiberlee: Nov 26 2009, 12:43 AM

then how should we celebrate mid-autumn festival
eating mooncakes without d moon?
sounds weird

Here's how you do it :

1. Hold the Mooncake
2. Put it into your mouth
3. Chew.

Is it that hard? This is highly unrelated to the topic at hand, as people will still celebrate said festival even without the moon present.



...

Can't remember the last time I checked the moon before eating mooncake.

tis i wrong
tats y ppl tend to forget about d steps when eatin mooncake
bcox mooncake is so yummy

If you watch Bruce Almighty before, there is a part where Bruce (Jim Carrey) pull the moon nearer to earth, and eventually make a mess of our earth climate.

Contrary, if the moon is removed, we would not have experience the monthly tide change. Ocean tide is extremely important not only to sea creature, but also create a cascading effect in energy circulation. Due to lack of water rise and fall, water current will become relatively calm. Warm place will become warmer, while cold place will become colder. Eventually, due to high differential in climate across region, will cause huge pressure differential. During season change, we are likely to experience more hostile weather.