Quote:
Originally Posted by PeterEde
What does the existence of the moon have to do with life on other planets? Life here may or may not have evolved with or without the moon. Sure it's had an affect on life but that's not to say life can not thrive on a moonless planet that has no seasons, no tides or minimal tides. To me that's being narrow minded and locks life into our style of evolution. Why does it have to be life as we know it?
What would life be like if dinosaurs never went extinct? Would they have evolved into intelligent life?
We have the form we do because we evolved to suit the Earth and it's conditions. Other life if it exists would do the same for it's environment.
100 billion galaxies with 100 billion stars, with 100 billion planets in each galaxy and some still think we are special.
SETI hopeful.
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No big moon around a planet means chaotic shifts in the planet's axis every half a million years or so, which means very adverse effects on weather patterns, which might be extremely tough on any complex organisms trying to develop.
We've had our own extreme weather events on earth, which wiped out lots of species. Imagine that happening far more often than happened here - so that they didn't get the millions of stable years that species had here.
A Moon-less earth-like planet would be only very superficially earth-like.
No doubt life will be found out there, but the best expectation is that it will mainly be algae.
Regards,
Renato