... the Moon had never formed?

 I know it is pretty hard to imagine the world without the moon. This white shining object traversing the sky in the night is part of our life. But for this article we will just assume that the moon never had formed. Will there be any other differences than just a shiny object missing in the night sky?

Before we can answer this question we should first know where the moon actually came from. The most common scientific theory says that there was an object about the size of Mars, called Theia, in space at that time. It crashed into Earth about 4.5 billion years ago. The impact created a cloud of debris which then combined to form the Moon. The so created new body was responsible for some interesting changes on the Earth as they are attracting each other by gravitational forces.

But let’s now get back to our original question. What would be the differences if there was no moon?

First of all, a day on Earth would only be about 8 to 10 hours long because moon would no longer slow Earth’s rotation down. The faster rotation would also cause really strong winds at the surface of Earth of 160 to 200 km/h. Besides, the Moon makes the axis of Earth stay stable. So, without the Moon Earth’s axis would wobble around. This would eventually result in dramatic changes of the temperature and climate over very long periods of time. Of course, the tides would be much smaller because they would only be affected a little by the Sun.

All in all, Earth would be a whole different place. Probably humans would not have developed the way we are now. There would exist creatures that could be totally different to what we are used to see on our Earth.