The Universe is a great show on the History Channel especially if you’re an amateur-astronomer-wannabe such as I. It takes you through the basics of outer-space physics and theories and other universe-marvels like black holes and the Sun and quasars and supernovas and so on with amazing generated-imagery plus animation. And of course, those experts they bring in to speak about concepts a little bit more in depth such as Alexei Filippenko and Laura Danly - who are my favorites.
The show got me wanting to write the following. So after a decent amount of reading and digging, I put all of the jumbled facts together in the neatest way I possibly could. Sorta. Many theories and ideas in the text require much more elaboration but that would just be sadistic to most readers. And to me, of course. I shall attempt to explain facts a bit further. One day, perhaps. But for now...
The moon is a barren lifeless rock but it plays a surprisingly important role toward the story of life on Earth. Just to know how important it is exactly, lets remove it from the sky and its orbit around the globe just to find out. I mean, what could go wrong anyway?
The Earth and our only natural satellite, the Moon have a very complex relationship. And because of this, the moon tugs the Earth’s mass towards it, forming an invisible gravitational bulge on the side of the Earth facing the Moon. However, through a strange quirk of gravitational physics, an identical bulge is formed on the side of the Earth farthest away from the moon. As the moon revolves around the earth, the position of these bulges change on the planet; and this is how our tides are controlled. You get the picture.
Now imagine a water-filled balloon stretched horizontally. Then imagine suddenly letting it go. You would imagine the balloon snapping back into its original spherical shape abruptly along with all the water in it. On a much bigger scale, thats exactly what our planet would go through if our moon were to be suddenly removed from the picture. Our oceans would slam against each other forming not one, but two ( depending on the lunar stage at that point. For example, on Gibbous Moons and Crescents, the number of waves formed would multiply. This would be one of the many the facts that require more explanation as I said earlier. ) massive tsunamis on either side of the globe; one moving from the direction East to West and the other West East. The formation of the waves would be similar to the ones in 2004 except they won’t be just 5 to 15 meters high. In this case, we would have to face waves with an unimaginable height of approximately 1 mile. Thats 1600 meters. A small costal city like Florida, wouldn’t stand a chance being pummeled by a mile high wall of water taking away lives of 11million in that small region in the United States alone. And keeping in mind these tsunamis are global; imagine the death and destruction throughout the entire world.
With such a titanic and sudden shift in water, you would picture be more unpredictable results. Scientists believe with such a huge shift in our oceans, the currents in the water would be badly altered. There could be two possible consequences to this.
One, if the current belt stops moving, we would go through the second ice age in Earth’s history. And the other consequence, assuming the current conveyer belt happens not to stop, however starts cycling the opposite direction, we would have a huge change in water temperatures. The currents are responsible of keeping the water at the poles warmer than they should be and the water at the equator cooler. So millions of species of aquatic life would be endangered and of course possibly extinct. The climate is a very delicate system, if we tweak one part of it, the other responds very abruptly. In the same way, changing the temperature of the waters does not just effect the water and what it inhabits but also has a huge role towards the shores. A good example to show a similar phenomena in our Earth’s history is the Sahara Desert. Before the ice age, the Sahara was a green and lush place, fertile and full of life. But after the ice age, the waters around the sahara got warmer and now leaving it a barren vast piece of land. So the climate plays a huge impact on our survival.
Unfortunately for us, it would just stop there. Not many people realize that the moon is what keeps us to a 23 and a half degree and very stable tilt. Without the moon around anymore, our axis would be a free fluctuating one. Our axis would be as vulnerable as a compass needle in a bunch of magnets. We would be at the mercy of the gravitational pulls of other planets orbiting around the sun. Our axis would fluctuate so frequently, that for a hundred years or so Antarctica would become a tropical jungle and the next century, glacier sheets would be covering Central Africa. Its unclear if human beings would be able to survive because we don’t know how rapidly we’d be able to adapt to a constantly changing environment. One things for sure, our livelihoods and would be horribly thrown into havoc.
Human beings do not solely depend on the environment but also the the other organisms that reign the planet. In this sense, the moon plays a vital role in keeping the whole plant and animal kingdom going. 44 percent of the living organisms on earth interact with the moonlight just to keep up with the lunar phases; its like keeping up with their body clocks or calendars so they would instinctively know when to breed, when to migrate and so on. Without it, they would be so disoriented that these creatures would be vanishing from the ecosystem so rapidly, causing other organisms in the food-energy chain that rely on them them to be in a situation just as unfortunate. So the moon is a big influence towards the intricate ecology on earth.
3 billion years ago, a Mars-size planet had crashed into Earth letting out 40 trillion tons of debris into space that had orbited in a “chain” around the Earth. Most of it was light metal and molten rock from our planet’s outer core. And just after a year, only 350 (+/-) days or so, these bits of debris clumped together to form our moon which had slowed down our planet’s rotation to 24 hours today ( at that point it had only slowed it down to 18 hours. However after four billion years, we have come to a 24-hour rotation; it will only increase as the bileniums go by ) and this had also stabilized our axis. So we owe our lives to this mere error that occurred in Earth’s early history. It wouldn’t have mattered that Earth was in the perfect “Goldilock” spot in the solar system; neither too hot or too cold, without the moon however, its safe to say evolution would have been severely stunted. Life would have never been the same. ( Gah. This also requires much justification )
I think its important we’re aware how unique our moon is in the solar system. Many planets like Jupiter have got dozens and none of them are large enough to influence their planet in any way. For one, our moon is significantly very large ; a quarter of the size of the Earth. It really is the odd-satellite-out in the solar system. And it JUST happened to be the driving force of such vibrant existence on our planet to the extent that some experts ( and a couple of UFO-fanatic-junkies ) have jokingly insisted that extra-terrestrial life from light years away had deliberately put the giant orb there to spark the flame of life on Earth. Sounds reasonable enough although I’d still go for the whole Mars-sized-planet-crash theory.
Its a fact that the moon moves away from the Earth, about half an inch every year. Even in retrospect, it doesn’t really have much of an impact on the way our planet is functioning. However, in 5 billion years, the moon would move so far away from Earth scientists believe it would just fling out of its orbit into space. Luckily for us we would never have to experience that day because in THREE billion years, our sun would be at its peak growth stage ( A red giant ), it would be SO hot and expand so rapidly that it would devour the first three planets of the solar system, which would include Mercury Venus and us, Earth. Yay.
Fingers crossed - that by then human beings would be witnessing this phenomena from a safe distance millions of miles away but its almost comforting, in a very twisted way, to know that when our Earth would have to go through this, our anchor in the sky would still be there with us.
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