Marion A. Johnson, age l2, of Boston, Mass., for her question:
What would happen if we lost the moon?
We human beings tend to take old friends for granted. When they leave We miss them. If we sometimes considered life without them, we might value more the friends we have. This same idea could help us to understand and appreciate the value of our old friend the moon.
The space agers are talking of a man made satellite planned to outshine our golden moon. This is a fine idea, but this man made moon could never compete with the other qualities of our natural moon. It would be a lightweight bubble of shiny material designed only to reflect glory from the sun and shed it upon the earth. The real moon is a globe of solid materials with built in factors such as gravitation. It has orbited its parent planet for countless ages and almost everything on the earth is used to its changing motions.
The most far reaching effect of the moon on the earth is the tidal action of the oceans. Twice each calendar day the tides wash up and down the global shore lines, into the bays and down the rivers. The surface waters are heaved up and down on every sea around the world. These tossing tides shift seaweeds and surface dwelIers of the ocean. Twice each day they rinse dead fishes and other debris from the beaches, and many creatures of tidal pools depend upon these tidal rhythms.
The tides of the spinning earth are caused by the combined gravitational pull of the sun and the orbiting moon. A high tide is lifted up as the moon passes overhead while a corresponding high tide rises on the opposite side of the globe. As the earth rotates under the moon, two high and two low tides chase each other around the globe.
The tidal pull of the sun is much weaker, and if we lost the moon, our ocean tides would be too slight to cleanse the shores and mingle the surface waters of the seas. This tidal action also pulls at the continents. even the mountains and the dry ground heave very slightly up and down and We do not know to what extent this has affected the land masses.
We would, of course, miss the golden light of the moon. For ages its changing phases have served as a calendar, marking off the four weeks of the lunar month. We also would miss other heavenly spectacles. The stupendous solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes directly between us and the sun, and there would be no solar eclipses. There would be no lunar eclipses either, for there would be no moon to be veiled in the eerie glow of the earth's shadow.
Many animals would suffer and perhaps perish without the moan. The owls and mice along with countless other night prowlers depend upon its gentle light. They often go hungry on the few nights of darkness before the new moon. We could, perhaps, provide for them with light from a man made satellite, but our shores would be left littered with smelly ocean debris and the tidal routine of countless sea dwellers would be upset. The continents and maybe other things might change, for even now we do not know all the subtle effects that the moon has upon the earth.