The Moon and Sun’s Effect on Earth

The gravity of the moon pulls at the earth and oceans. This makes them swell toward the moon,
creating high tides where the pull is strongest. Earth spins, moving the high and low tides. High tides
happen twice a day, when part of the ocean is closest to the moon, and when it is farthest. This is sort of
because the whole earth bulges in an oval shape, creating tension on both sides of itself. When the moon,
sun, and earth are parallel, it creates spring or neap tides - extra-big or extra-small tides. The wind can
push tides toward or away from the shore, changing the strength and effect of the tides. Tides would
probably slow down if oceans were shallower. Land tides are when the moon’s gravity moves the earth’s
surface very slowly. Scientists think that land tides possibly affect volcanic activity.
Tides bring water up to plants and animals living on the shore or on high tide zones. In intertidal
zones, there are often tidepools, which are home to many sea creatures. Tides affect how people fish by
providing places for fish and moving them around. Engineers and sailors both need to know the tides so
that they can build and navigate safely. Tides can also generate energy using underwater turbines. As
oceans rise from global warming, living on coasts becomes increasingly dangerous because common
tides could create floods. Warm currents and tides can carry heat to the shore, and the same with cold
currents.
The sun’s energy is soaked up by the earth, then turned into heat and back to the atmosphere,
where most of it is absorbed by greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and water droplets. Some of
this heat is sent back into space, but some of it is reflected back to earth or bounced around in the
atmosphere. This is called the greenhouse effect. It is important in keeping earth warm, but is also
increasing global warming and humans generate more greenhouse gases.
Earth’s atmosphere is thought to be gradually dissipating. Without it, earth would be below
freezing. There would be no sound or air pressure. Most life would die without oxygen unless humans
built some sort of dome with air and regular atmospheric features. There would be dangerous radiation
and water would heat and maybe vaporize. Nitrogen, which comes from an unknown source, would
mostly dissipate.
Clouds both trap and reflect solar energy. Higher cirruses usually contribute to the greenhouse
effect. Lower cumuluses generally bounce the sunlight back towards space.
The earth’s axis is currently tilted at a 23.5° angle. As Earth circumnavigates the sun, certain
sections get different amounts of sunlight because they are tilted more or less toward the sun. This
changes the weather and temperature of the parts of Earth and creates seasons. If the earth was not
tilted, there would not be seasons. If the earth was tilited at a ninety-degree angle, spring and fall would
feel about the same, but in summer and winter the area near the equator would be much hotter and the
areas around the poles would be considerably colder. I think days would still be 24 hours, with 12 day and
12 night.
The orbit of earth has less than a 0.02 eccentricity. It is nearly round. An eccentricity is a
measurement between zero and one that measures how far from being circular something is.

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This is uranus (haha), and it shows how the seasons work when a planet is tilted like uranus:

Solar wind is made of “charged particles” from the sun. Its radiation can be dangerous in space,
without atmosphere.
Without the moon, there would be very few tides or good ways to track months. Days would be
much shorter - about 10 hours long. Tides push against the earth’s rotation, slowing it. Some tides come
from the sun, called solar tides, but they are not as strong as lunar tides since the sun is so much farther
away. With less tides interfering with the earth’s rotation, it would spin faster and shorten our days. The
Earth’s axis would also wobble.
Earth takes 365 and a quarter days to orbit around the sun, which is why we have leap year every
four years.
Random fact: no one knows what the opposite side of the moon looks like.
Jupiter is positioned exactly so that it blocks most dangerous astroids and fumes.
If there wasn’t a sun, no life could exist on Earth. Plants would lack food, animals would lose their
plant food, and people would not have plants or animals to rely on. Not to mention the temperature would
be around absolute zero and everyone would freeze.
If the earth was closer to the sun, glaciers would melt, filling oceans and causing floods over the
most of the planet. The planet would heat up as carbon dioxide came out of the oceans and there was
less land to absorb heat. Eventually the oceans could possibly boil. If our planet was farther away, it
would freeze. The earth is 92.036 million miles away from the sun.
A goldilocks zone is the zone around a star where life can potentially exist, where it is neither too
hot or too cold for liquid water. Scientists search for planets inside goldilocks zones when they look for
habitable exoplanets. There have been around 1,780 planets found beyond our solar system, but only
about fifteen are in goldilocks zones.
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Milankovich cycles
The moon’s temperature is 250* F in the day and -208* F in the night around the equator.
The sun 9,941* F, and the core is 27 million degrees.
The earth’s core is 9,392* fahrenheit.