Rosemarie Moretz, age 12, of Allentown, Penna., or her question:

If we lost the moon would we lose the tides?

Our tides are caused b y the sun and the moon. The highest tides form when the sun and moon pull together from the same direction. Of course the gravity pull of the sun is far, far greater than that of the little moon, but the pull of gravity wanes with distance. And the sun is 400 times further away from us. On earth the tidal pull of the moon is twice as strong as that from the distant sun.

This means that if we lost the moon we would lose two thirds of the pulling power which makes our ocean tides. We would still have two high and two low tides every 24 hours. But they would be only one third as strong.