The tragedy of the moon?

[rhoenix]

I'm wondering if in this scenario the Moon never existed, or it was stolen away (somehow, Alien Space Bats?) after it had been present for some time?

In this scenario, assume the Moon has never orbitted Earth - it was formed from and orbits Venus instead.

[Spin Echo]

I suggest you do the math on the surface area of a sphere of radius equal to the Moon's average orbital radius, and then divide that surface area by the Moon's cross-sectional area in order to derive a ratio. You will find that despite what you may intuitively conclude, the Moon actually blocks very little of our sky. Moreover, any gravitational influence it has on large passing asteroids could just as easily pull them into an impact path; there is no law stating that the Moon can only pull asteroids off an impact path, and not onto an impact path.

You read too much into "somewhat". I clearly realise that the moon's cross section is but a fraction of our sky and doesn't do that much to protect the earth. I was making the point that it's Jupiter that really protects us from asteroids, because it pulls in a lot of solar system debris (witness the Trojans). But, like you said, there's no rule stating it can only pull asteroids off an impact path. Jupiter has a nasty tendancy to accelerate asteroids in the belt between it and Mars and slinging them into near Earth orbits.

[CoyoteNature]

Life would have evolved anyway I think, depends on whether or not the chemosynthetic model for starting life is right or the tidal pool model is right, if the the chem model then life would have started without tidal forces at all.

The chem model is dependent on the concept of black smokers.

Anyone ever wonder if the impactor event that hit the Earth that caused the moon to form might have been responsible for geology as we know it? You know with tectonic plates and all, I mean consider Venus it has vulcanism, but it's crust is so thick that periodically heat buildup causes the whole thing to melt.

Maybe the impactor managed to scrape of enough crust matter to allow cracks to form in the Earth's crust, thus creating plate tectonics as we know it, which then allowed for more frequent replenishment of atmosphere, thus contributing to the stability of our own atmosphere. Considering volcanism is at current responsible for partly replenishing the atmosphere, and at the same time keep the heat buildup from getting to large.

If Venus had a the Moon, then maybe it would have been able to keep pace with its own atmospheric loss of hydrogen and various other volatiles, or maybe not maybe the Sun's heat up would have overwhelmed the entire system.

[Spin Echo]

Werewolf legends would probably be right out.

No, only the part about full moons would be out. That's because in folklore, werewolves were usually evil magic users or people cursed to become wolves; the moon had nothing to do with it. As usual you may thank modern fiction for that.

Didn't know that. To go a bit OT, do you know if there is any mythology relating to other lycanthropes (Werebats and werebears and so forth) or do all those stem from D&D?

[Imperial Overlord]

Didn't know that. To go a bit OT, do you know if there is any mythology relating to other lycanthropes (Werebats and werebears and so forth) or do all those stem from D&D?

Native Americans have a whole host of skin changers and shape shifters, exact details varying by which tribe and culture you are talking about, the Norse and Celts had a fair number of shape shifter myths, and there are wereleopard legends in a number of parts of Africa.