The Moon

[Huderon]

I was watching an animated short and as part of the introduction the following statement is made :

"Without the Moon, Earth's axis would shift wildly, continually wiping out life and preventing it from attaining complexity. And without it's tidal effects on the oceans, life would not have had the help it needed 380 million years ago to emerge from the seas, taking the first steps onto land ..."

Out of curiosity, how accurate is that statement about the Earth's axis ?

[rsvp]

Pretty accurate I'd say - we're all here after how may million years aren't we?

[Buenchico]

It used to be widely accepted but more some researchers now believe that the stabilising effect of the Moon on the Earth's axis might not be quite as important as once thought:
http://www.astrobio.net/news-exclusive/the-odds-for-life-on-a-moonless-earth/

[ToraToraTora]

very.

[EDDIE51]

Don't know about the axis shifting but the Tides which are due to the Moon are very important.

[beso]

The claim about the tides being important to life is presumably based on the idea that life would not emerge from the sea without an intertidal zone.

I don't think this is necessarily the case.

[THECORBYLOON]

Been looking at a few flat earth videos, gravity does not exist and the sun and the moon rotate above the earth's surface. This is odd since the effect of what we call "gravity" is caused by earth going upward at 32 foot a second per second so I am not sure why we've not crashed into either one of them...

[Sipowicz]

It's turtles all the way!

[EDDIE51]

Corby, Your mention of 'flat earth' spurred me to Google 'Flat Earth Proof'
Can you read this without laughing out loud?
https://flatearthscienceandbible.wordpress.com/2016/02/08/top-ten-undeniable-flat-earth-proofs/
I managed it until I got to the bit about 'if the Earth was round aircraft would have to keep dipping their nose down every few miles' !

[Old_Geezer]

But that is precisely why Concorde's nose tilted !

[THECORBYLOON]

Antarctica isn't a continent, it's a huge mass of ice circling the earth keeping all the water in. The sun and moon are the same size, only a few thousand mile away and sunrise/sunset are the sun coming toward us and going away respectively.

Not sure they have explained how we and the Australians see different stars if we're on a flat surface

[jno]

we don't. Australians lie about these things to confuse the poms.

[hc4361]

Of course the earth is flat - the Australians aren't hanging on by their tippy toes