Is it true that life on earth would not be possible without the moon?

Question

I have heard that the relationship between the earth and moon is so precise (size, distance, rotation) that if any one factor were to be changed, life on earth would not be possible.

Fact or Fiction? please provide a source.

Answer 1

I think the moon was the reason life developed on earth, It stablized its rotation and created tides. Otherwise the earth would be constantly changing its rotation so maybe for a few thosand years it would be cool at the north pole then it would switch suddenly and Peru would be the north pole killing many lifeforms

Answer 2

It's not that it would not be possible, but that it would be very different, for a multitude of reasons. The actual formation process of the Earth/Moon system, after a Mars mass body impacted the young Earth, around 4,600,000,000 years ago, is highly unlikely to be duplicated exactly anywhere else in the galaxy, or only in a handful of star systems, and the relative abundance of their chemical elements, and the nature of their planetary systems, so different, that life like ours would be out of the question. Read several recent books on Astrobiology, and enter that term and Bioastronomy in the Google and Wikipedia websites, and the WebFerret and your own search engine, as well as Amazon.com

Answer 3

life would still be possible but very different. The moon does not keep the earth from flying off into space. It does protect the earth from alot of meteor impacts, and more importantly, without the moon our planet would wobble alot more--the earth revolves around the sun at an angle of about 23.5 degrees, thus we have winter, summer ect. Without the moon the planet would be at a far greater angle say 90 degrees, and the weather would be alot more extreme.

Answer 4

Yes it is true.

Without the Moon, there would have been no life on Earth.

Four billion years ago, when life began, the Moon orbited much closer to us than it does now, causing massive tides to ebb and flow every few hours. These tides caused dramatic fluctuations in salinity around coastlines which could have driven the evolution of early DNA-like biomolecules.

This hypothesis, which is the work of Richard Lathe, a molecular biologist at Pieta Research in Edinburgh, UK, also suggests that life could not have begun on Mars.

Answer 5

Fact.
The moons orbital pull around our earth keeps it in balance, and keeps it from spinning off into no where.

The Earth and Moon: The Moon's orbit
The Moon stays in orbit about the Earth because of the gravitational attraction ... However, the orbit that the Moon follows is not a circle as was once believed. ...inkido.indiana.edu/a100/earthmoon5.html - 4k - Cached - More from this site
The Earth, Sun, and Moon
... earth orbits the sun in an elliptical orbit and the moon orbits the earth with ... The moon does not orbit the center of the earth, rather, they both revolve ...library.thinkquest.org/29033/begin/earthsunmoon.htm - 17k - Cached - More from this site

Answer 6

Life probably would have "sparked" with or without the moon. Although in many ways it regulates tempurature, and could have made human life not possible. But microbes and insects and other lifeforms have no need for our moon.

Answer 7

Yes, there is a hypothesis suggesting this, but it is probably not true. The hypothosis assumes extremely strict requirements for the formation of life.

Answer 8

I disagree.

It may have been harder for life to evolve, or the increased stress may have given evolution a boost, but I don't think it would have made life impossible.

We need more data to make an intelligent deduction.

Answer 9

I do not think that is true, because our gravitational force and atmosphere makes it possible to live here. I do know the moon and sun are reasons we have high and low tides.

Answer 10

who says that? Life on earth would be possible without moon but we will have no lunatics to make jokes about.