If the moon suddenly vanished, what would people on earth experience?

[Meatbot]

Would there be earthquakes and tsunamis, or would nothing odd happen at all apart from smaller tides?

 

[leftyguitarjo]

The Earth would wobble like crazy. The seasons would be all out of whack. Life wouldn't survive for long.

No tides either.

 

[Oberst Villa]

The Earth would wobble like crazy. The seasons would be all out of whack. Life wouldn't survive for long.

No tides either.

I agree with your last point, no tides at all.

but no life ? surely the moonlight brings the ladies into a romantic mood and makes it easier to seduce them (not that I would claim too much expertise here...), so:

no moonlight -> no seduction -> no sex -> end of mankind

but surely the animal kingdom as a whole should not be affected ?

seriously, as for the wobble: OK, moon and Earth are kind of synchronized, but I always thought this would mostly affect the moon (rotation about its own axis in sync with rotation around earth, therefore always pointing same side to us), but would Earth really be affected that much ? no stable rotation around our own axis any longer ?

 

[_Mayday_]

We would only know about it a few seconds after it happened!

 

[russ_watters]

The Earth would wobble like crazy. The seasons would be all out of whack. Life wouldn't survive for long.

Why would the Earth wobble?

 

[Nabeshin]

There would still be tides, I think, only due to the sun's gravity, therefore much weaker and slower, than the lunar tides we experience. I don't remember what I read, but I seem to recall something detailing how our moon is actually extremely important to the development of life on Earth.

 

[Danger]

I seem to recall something detailing how our moon is actually extremely important to the development of life on Earth.

I've never heard of that, but it might make sense if low tides made it easier for our ancestors to transition from the ocean to land.

 

[Meatbot]

I'm thinking that if the Earth has a force pulling on it constantly and then that force is suddenly removed, you'd get vibration as the Earth relaxed into a non-stretched state, like a rubber band vibrates after it's shot. Maybe that means huge earthquakes and tsunamis. I don't think the Earth would wobble, just vibrate.

The tides allowed sea animals living near the shore to be exposed to air for periods of time as they were left in the sand as the tide went out. That would acclimatize them over time to land life.

 

[leftyguitarjo]

So it wouldn't wobble? more than it already does, anyway.

 

[Nabeshin]

I'm thinking that if the Earth has a force pulling on it constantly and then that force is suddenly removed, you'd get vibration as the Earth relaxed into a non-stretched state, like a rubber band vibrates after it's shot. Maybe that means huge earthquakes and tsunamis. I don't think the Earth would wobble, just vibrate.

The tides allowed sea animals living near the shore to be exposed to air for periods of time as they were left in the sand as the tide went out. That would acclimatize them over time to land life.

Erm, I see no reason why the Earth should suddenly feel a "spring force". Simply, the Earth has two forces on it right now: due to the sun and moon. If the moon disappears we will simply accelerate due solely to the sun. There is no "resting position" for the Earth that the moon took us out of...

 

[DavidWhitbeck]

Why would the Earth wobble?

The gravitational force the moon exerts on the sun is approximately half that of the sun. The axis is tilted and so they both torque the Earth causing it to precess. With the moon gone there is no partial cancellation of the torques and so the net torque will be greater, and thus the precession will be greater.

That's just speculation from me, I don't really know what I'm talking about.

 

[Lojzek]

There would be no Earthquakes! The moon is 80 times lighter than the Earth and it's distance from the Earth is about 50 times Earth's radious. This gives only 1/200000 g of acceleration. In addition the Earth is deformed only by gradient of that gravity, since it is in free fall motion against the Moon: each atom on Earth is atracted with almost the same force as needed to maintain radial acceleration. If you remove both force and acceleration, then nothing happens (except the very small effect, because the near end of the Earth used to experience more attraction than the far end).

 

[CometDude]

we would have less light pollution at night for observing with telescopes. We would have no more Lunar or Solar Eclipses.

 

[yenchin]

We will no longer have 24 hour per day. It will be much faster. I could not recall the exact number. Anyone can help?

 

[Lojzek]

If the Moon would vanish, we would still have 24 hours per day, since Earth's rotation frequency is determined by it's angular momentum. As far as the length of the day is concerned, Moon's dissapearance would be an advantage, since the torque of Moons gravity would cease and the rotation would not slow down anymore.
But if there was no Moon in the history of the Earth, then the Earth would still rotate very fast and the life on Earth would probably be very different.

 

[goeat]

If the moon vanished, NASA would get blamed, and it would turn out that there was never any moon at all, just a government conspiracy so NASA could fake the moon landings.

 

[Oberst Villa]

There would still be tides, I think, only due to the sun's gravity, therefore much weaker and slower, than the lunar tides we experience. I don't remember what I read, but I seem to recall something detailing how our moon is actually extremely important to the development of life on Earth.

ooops... seems that my statement "no tides at all" was quite wrong. after some calculation I think that they would not even decrease that much:

if we have a mass M, then a test mass in the distance r would experience an acceleration of

a(r) = -GM / r^2

to get the gradient, which is the cause of the tidal forces, we have to differentiate this and get

a'(r) = 2GM / r^3

now we are not interested in absolute values, but in the relative strength of the tidal forces from moon and sun. so 2G cancels and we get as the relation

(Ms / Mm) * (rm / rs) ^ 3

where Ms and Mm are the masses of sun and moon and rm and rs are the the distances earth-moon and earth-sun.

putting in the numbers I get the result that the tidal forces of the moon are only stronger than those of the sun by a factor of 2.18

so the tides would decrease significantly, but they would not at all vanish !

these are the numbers I used:
Ms = 1.9891 E 30 kg
Mm = 7.3477 E 22 kg
rs = 1.496 E 11 m
rm = 3.84399 E 8 m

 

[cepheid]

If the moon vanished, NASA would get blamed, and it would turn out that there was never any moon at all, just a government conspiracy so NASA could fake the moon landings.

LOL...a government conspiracy somehow passed along amongst all world governments that have ever existed anywhere throughout recorded history. I'm impressed! I wonder how they pulled off the mass hallucinations...

 

[Lojzek]

LOL...a government conspiracy somehow passed along amongst all world governments that have ever existed anywhere throughout recorded history. I'm impressed! I wonder how they pulled off the mass hallucinations...

So that bright ball I used to observe on the sky was actually a product of my brain implant?

 

[RandyDisher]

If the moon vanished, NASA would get blamed, and it would turn out that there was never any moon at all, just a government conspiracy so NASA could fake the moon landings.

No doubt about that! Haha

 

[hidlAP2010]

Should the moon vanish there would be less of a gravitational force being applied to the Earth as well as its inhabitants. As for the tides, they would still exist (due to the sun's gravity) however to a much less of a degree.

 

[Danger]

It would also mean the extinction of werewolves, and then where would I be?

 

[Grimstone]

Should the moon vanish there would be less of a gravitational force being applied to the Earth as well as its inhabitants. As for the tides, they would still exist (due to the sun's gravity) however to a much less of a degree.

The Gravitational pull would be from the sun only. therefor we would only have 1 high tide and only at or about noon everyday. the lowest low tide would be on or about midnight.
there would be effects on the animal kingdom as it would disrupt them to veritable degrees

 

[prashantjha]

if moon suddenly disappears ,then as we know weak and slower tides will be there,we will have faster rotation due to absence of gravitational force on earth, which consecuently increase and resizes Earth's radius resulting in slower angular velocities.also the trajectory of Earth might change if this act of disappearing takes place when Earth is not on the Earth moon,solar oribit.as we know the orbit that we speak of around the sun is not Earth's orbit,but orbit of earth-moon system.as Earth and moon both revolve around each other,hence many a time Earth is not on it's actualy trajectory.but it is the moon that brings it back to it's path.so in such case ,earth will not be influenced by any such force and hence it's trajectory will change.this will create havoc in all our seasons.also depending on the time of disappearance of moon,avg temp on Earth may reduce or increase...

 

[Grimstone]

The Gravitational pull would be from the sun only. therefor we would only have 1 high tide and only at or about noon everyday. the lowest low tide would be on or about midnight.
there would be effects on the animal kingdom as it would disrupt them to veritable degrees

I have to admit, I made a error in this statement.

With only the sun to create tides. Noon and midnight would be the high tides. 3 and 9 would be the low tides.

 

[AVReidy]

My understanding is probably flawed, but could the Moon's vanishing possibly change Earth's orbit because of the sudden loss of mass? Could this eventually lead Earth too close to the sun for life as we know it?

 

[Drakkith]

if moon suddenly disappears ,then as we know weak and slower tides will be there,we will have faster rotation due to absence of gravitational force on earth, which consecuently increase and resizes Earth's radius resulting in slower angular velocities.also the trajectory of Earth might change if this act of disappearing takes place when Earth is not on the Earth moon,solar oribit.as we know the orbit that we speak of around the sun is not Earth's orbit,but orbit of earth-moon system.as Earth and moon both revolve around each other,hence many a time Earth is not on it's actualy trajectory.but it is the moon that brings it back to it's path.so in such case ,earth will not be influenced by any such force and hence it's trajectory will change.this will create havoc in all our seasons.also depending on the time of disappearance of moon,avg temp on Earth may reduce or increase...

The rotation of the Earth would neither increase nor decrease. CURRENTLY the moon is slowing down the rotation of the Earth, so losing the moon would cause that deceleration to stop, but it would not increase our spin.

My understanding is probably flawed, but could the Moon's vanishing possibly change Earth's orbit because of the sudden loss of mass? Could this eventually lead Earth too close to the sun for life as we know it?

The loss of mass would not change our orbit, as the pull from gravity is only affected by the larger objects mass, which in this case is the Sun. If the Earth were 20% more massive it would still orbit in exactly the same way. The only difference would be that it very slightly pulls the Sun more than it did before.

 

[Grimstone]

My understanding is probably flawed, but could the Moon's vanishing possibly change Earth's orbit because of the sudden loss of mass? Could this eventually lead Earth too close to the sun for life as we know it?

In fact, the moon IS gathering it's belongings ands is looking for a new apartment.
The man in the moon is in fact little by little slipping away from the earth.
There will be affects will have some effects but not in the cataclysmic proportions that
the doomsayers) think.