This may sounds silly but I cant help but wonder. If the moon were destroyed, what would happen to the earth?
491644
Interesting question.  We would no longer have the moon's tidal forces, so no more high and low tides.  This would destroy the vast ecosystems along shorelines that depend on tides for their existence, and could well cause very negative effects on the Earth's entire balance of life, since these areas produce the most nutrients.
535923
um...There wouldn't be anything, there would be no earth, the sun will increase in diameter causing the temp. on earth to rise VERY high, and people will finally build a powerful rocket to go to another planet that's similar to earth or mars...
664708
For starters there would be no tides. Moon is responsible of tides, since its magnetic field affects the sea level. Also, visibility at night would be significally reduced.
646581
Undoubtedly our moon has been impacted by asteroids and other objects that otherwise would have struck Earth. If the moon wasn't there, then it follows that we might be struck more frequently.
216980
No. The Moon rocks that the astronauts brought back and are in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, where millions of people have seen them, tell the story. They are glazed on the top side, just a little. \n\nDirect sunlight on the Moon is hot, but not hot enough to melt rock. (it gets to around 320 degrees F.) To cause rocks to glaze like pottery in a kiln, you would need about 1100 degrees F. So we see evidence of Lunar warming.\n\nNo process on Earth can affect the temperature on the Moon. But the Sun, which warms both the Moon and Earth, is unstable. We know the Sun is 4% variable, but we have only had the instruments to study the Sun for about the past fifty years. Maybe it gets more variable sometimes. \n\nTen or twenty thousand years ago-- we can't be sure-- the Sun flared up. It was very brief, or the rocks on the Moon would have become molten and flowed. It had to have lasted less than 24 hours (one rotation of the Earth) or nothing would have survived. I think the American continents were in sunlight at the time. \n\nSo it got hot enough on the Moon to cause the rocks to start to glaze over, but not hot enough long enough to melt them all the way through.\n\nOn Earth, the oceans boiled. There were hurricanes of live steam. A lot of species died, and there were only a few survivors like Noah.\n\nWhen the flare died out, there was all that excess water vapor in the atmosphere. It had to precipitate somewhere, and the first place was at the colest points on the planet, which were still the poles. \n\nYou see, you can't have an ice age, you can't have polar ice caps, you can't have glaciers, without water vapor in the atmosphere. The water tied up in ice was thousands of times more than the Sun would evaporate under normal circumstances. \n\nNow, the icepacks are finally melting back to the size they used to be before the flare. The planet is reaching thermal equilibrium once more. \n\nThere is evidence of other ice ages before that. They may have been caused by comets hitting the earth (in an ocean.) They would have impact energies equivalent to thousands of megatons of TNT, and would similarly put massive amouns of warter vapor into the atmosphere, with the same results.\n\nWhy don't you hear people talking about this? Because there's nothng that we could do about it. It sells more ad time on radio and tv to say that we did it to ourselves with polution. The ice will melt and the oceans will rise about 50 to 100 feet, and the coastal cities will all disappear, and there's nothing we can do to stop it. So the best bet is to move the cities inland and figure out where the new harbors and beaches will be.\n\nYes, we should pollute less, but here's something else to consider. Remember Mount Saint Helens? Biggest volcanic eruption in America in the last few hundred years. But volcanic eruptions happen a few times a century around the world, and that one wasn't especially big by global standards. \n\nNational Geographic did an article on it; you can look it up. They had a beautiful two page photo spread. The pictures one week after the eruption looked like the surface of the Moon. It was all cold grey ashes, dead tree trunks sticking out, and little craters (ponds). The other picture was one year later. It had the exact same tree trunks and ponds (the same spot) but now everything was green and growing. \n\nThe heat of the volcanic ash burned away dead leaves and underbush that kept the sunlight from reaching the forest floor, while the ashes are very good fertilizer. The heat also caused long-buried seeds to germinate.\n\nHere's the point: that one eruption put more dirt, gas, dust and radioactive particles into the atmosphere than everything we've done since day one. And the planet survived. The planet does this to itself REPEATEDLY and survives. \n\nEven the Trinity site, the site of the first atom bomb test, has things living there now, and the radiation level is barely abo
1165555
You get rid of all the balance on our planet!  It would mess up the ecosystem and the food chain therefore all the living creatures on Earth, including people.  Everything effects everything else.  I imagine that they weather would go crazy or at least not function like we know it.  The domino effect would go out of control.  Unless, our planet could find another way of keeping the balance we are all screwed.
1040803
Explain how a 600 yard wide rock could cause the 2,160 mile wide Moon to wobble, without touching it? It'd be like throwing a golf ball at a bus and expecting it to tip it over....\n\nIt doesn't matter what the moon does as far as wobbling and spinning, it's gravity isnt affected (unless it breaks up) and therefore the end result means zip to us. We may just get to see the far side!
435456
If the moon was covered with aluminium foil, the reflected light would be brighter but not as bright as daylight, in accordance with the proportion of the moon that is visible.\n\nAnd yes, the earth would heat up a little, because the reflection contains not just extra light, but extra heat as well... and since night is the time when the shadowed earth dissipates the heat, it wouldn't be able to do that if the moon was reflecting some warmth.
442996
THe main issue with the Moon being the same size as the earth is that the moon would no longer be pulled in by the earth's gravitional pull. The planets would either settle into seperate orbits or collide and kill us all.\n\nThat aside, the size of Earth is one factor determing wether or not life is supportable. Other important factors are the tilt (has to be within 3 degrees if I remeber correcctly) and it's distance from the sun. \n\nI have heard of the theory of an 'anti-earth', a tehrotical earth on the oppsite side of our orbit with the same chactersitics as our planet and therefore capable of life. This might be starying into the realm oif sci-fi though
328052
NOT sure how mankind's dearm gets fulfilled by blowing up moon!
588895
The obvious answer is the tides would be much smaller. We would still have tides, but they would be: (1) Caused by the Sun and therefore smaller. (2) They would come at roughly the same time each day.\n\nThis would affect a good deal of the marine life that depends on the tidal changes.\n\nLighting would also change. Reproductive behaviors in a number of animals are goverened by the moon's cycle. It is not known how much the moon's absence would change this.\n\nThe days would not grow longer as someone suggested. The opposite is true as the friction overcome in producing the tides takes energy. That energy is coming out of the earth's rotation and the moon's orbiting around the earth. The moon is slowly moving farther away and the earth is slowing down so the days are getting longer. Of course, this is an extremely slow process and you are not going to notice any change. The moon's absence would mean it wouldn't take place.\n\nEarthquakes would not be affected. They are caused by plate tectonics, which is independent of the moon.\n\nIf you are interested in the moon, try\nhttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/lunar-observing/\n\nHope this helps\n\nChuck
260393
There will be deadly consequences, below is a website with more details:\n\nhttp://www.exitmundi.nl/moon.htm
1087792
No. The earth would still rock on. Only its magnetic field would be annihilated. Like at Mars. Or Moon.
712286
The moon does not rotate. If it did you would see ocean tides that would destroy everything on the coasts of all the nations on earth that exist next to the oceans. Imagine waves coming fast and furious that are over a mile high every time they hit the beach. And because of the disruptive nature of the moons pull on the oceans, no one would be traveling to other countries by ship, because the tides would sink a ship before it got out of sight.
750691
The Earth will probably not be destroyed. All life may die but the Earth will still be here. Something about 300 meters across hits the Earth about once every 20,000 - 30,000 years. This is big enough to make a city sized crater.\n\nHere is a link to the Top 10 Ways to Destroy the Earth. \nhttp://www.livescience.com/technology/destroy_earth_mp.html\n\nTo blow up the Earth you would need 224,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Joules. The Sun takes nearly a WEEK to output that much \nenergy.
935068
Now, I can't swear to this, because I was half asleep when I watched this, but I watched this show on the Discovery channel about a week ago.  They were talking about how the earth has a molten core that is constantly moving around, so therefore we have earthquakes.  The moon is solid, so therefore, no earthquakes.  That's also why we don't see many of the craters from asteroids that hit us over the millions of years because our earth's surface is continually changing from these earthquakes.
85721
googled to find this:\n\n"The Moon, at first, will recede further and further from the Earth, but the two bodies will continue to orbit about their common centre of gravity. Around 600,000,000 years from now, the Moon will be too far away for total eclipses to occur.\n\nHowever, this process won't continue indefinitely - as Mike Sawicki points out in his Myths About Tides and Gravity:\n\nOnce the Earth becomes tidally locked with the Moon, the solar tides will tend to slow the Earth’s rotation even more, so the day will be longer than the month and the Moon will rise in the West and set in the East. The water spheroid generated by the Sun will cause the high tide to appear earlier than the time of highest moon ... Then the tidal force of Earth on the Moon will pull the Moon into a lower orbit and eventually inside the Roche limit (18500 km), whereupon the Moon will disintegrate producing a ring round the Earth."\n\nWhatever happens, we won't be around to know!