Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Lauren Vogelbauma, host of the new house Stuff
Speaker 1: Works Now podcast. Every week, I'll be bringing you three
Speaker 1: stories from our team about the weird and wondrous developments
Speaker 1: we've seen in science, technology, and culture. Fresh episodes will
Speaker 1: be out every Monday on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music,
Speaker 1: and everywhere else that fine podcasts are found. Welcome to
Speaker 1: brain Stuff from how Stuff Works. Oh hey, there, brain Stuff.
Speaker 1: It's Christian Seger and it is time you and I
Speaker 1: had to talk about the Moon. I know we haven't
Speaker 1: been there in a while, but it is pretty rad.
Speaker 1: I mean, we think that about four point five billion
Speaker 1: years ago, something the size of Mars crashed into Earth
Speaker 1: and ricocheted into space to form the Moon. It even
Speaker 1: took some of Earth's mantle with it, so there's ancient
Speaker 1: chunks of our planet merged with space stuff up there
Speaker 1: just hanging out in orbit. But even with all that,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure the Moon gets all the credit it deserves.
Speaker 1: If it wasn't there, things would be a lot different
Speaker 1: here on our little blue planet. First, we'd see some
Speaker 1: pretty dramatic changes to the ocean. The Moon is responsible
Speaker 1: for most of the effects of tides without it, the
Speaker 1: tides would only be a third of the size that
Speaker 1: they are now. This is because the Sun would account
Speaker 1: for the major gravitational pull affecting the altitude of the ocean.
Speaker 1: And while the Sun is way bigger than the Moon,
Speaker 1: like like four times bigger, it is also much further away,
Speaker 1: so the tides it creates only have about of the
Speaker 1: strength of our current lunar tides. Surfing wouldn't be the
Speaker 1: only thing that suffered. Lots of ecosystems rely on the
Speaker 1: motion and changes of the tides to sustain them. Plus,
Speaker 1: the Moon holds a bulge of tidal water around Earth's
Speaker 1: middle that would disperse without its gravity, changing coastlines around
Speaker 1: the world. Also, did you know that the Moon helps
Speaker 1: slow down the rotation of Earth yep. Without it, we
Speaker 1: wouldn't have twenty four hour days. They'd be more like
Speaker 1: six to eight hours long. We'd have to remake our
Speaker 1: calendar to accommodate between eleven hundred and fourteen hundred days
Speaker 1: per year. Not only would that screw up all of
Speaker 1: our schedules, but a faster rotation would also increase the
Speaker 1: amount of wind and storms on our planet. If that's
Speaker 1: not extreme climate change enough, for you. No moon would
Speaker 1: also destabilize the Earth's access unpredictably, changing our tilt with
Speaker 1: side effects that would render the planet inhospitable to lots
Speaker 1: of its creatures. Right now, we're tilted at a lovely
Speaker 1: twenty three degrees, which gives us relatively mild seasons and environments,
Speaker 1: but the Moon acts as an external force that stabilizes
Speaker 1: that angle. Without it, we could wobble anywhere between zero
Speaker 1: degrees with no seasons and barely any sunlight to eighty
Speaker 1: five degrees, where the planet would fall over on its
Speaker 1: side like a kitten on a cat nip pieh Mars,
Speaker 1: for example, wobbles only fifteen and thirty five degrees, and
Speaker 1: it experiences drastic climate changes where ice drifts all the
Speaker 1: way from its poles to its equator. Finally, Gang, I
Speaker 1: don't know if you've noticed, but the moon's pretty darn
Speaker 1: bright up there in the middle of the night. Sure,
Speaker 1: the sun is four hundred thousand times brighter, but sometimes
Speaker 1: it still hits your eye, you know, like like like
Speaker 1: a big pizza pie, which means that without it, our
Speaker 1: knights would be a lot darker than we're used to. Try.
Speaker 1: Stumbling around in the woods without a moon and see
Speaker 1: how you like it. Check out the brain stuff channel
Speaker 1: on YouTube, and for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.