We believe the Moon has been beneficial for the development of life here, but we do not know whether the Moon was necessary for life. Perhaps if we lived on a Moonless world we would be grateful we did not have one of those huge chunks of rock hanging so close to us in the sky.

Presumably a Moonless world would still have had weather patterns, including rain, so erosion would have taken place but on a tiny scale compared with what happened when the Moon was so much closer to the Earth.

What might this world lack that is as hard to imagine as the Moon would be on an unMooned Earth? Of what absences are we unaware? As well as an absence, the Moonless world would be marked by difference. Folklore, nocturnal action and assignation, marine and maritime life: all would be otherwise.

Moonless

Meaning

Adj

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