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"In 1993, French mathematicians Jacques Laskar and Philippe Robutel showed that Earth’s large moon has a stabilizing effect on our planet’s climate. Without the moon, gravitational perturbations from other planets, notably nearby Venus and massive Jupiter, would greatly disturb Earth’s axial tilt, with vast consequences for the planet’s climate. The steadily orbiting moon’s gravitational tug counteracts these disturbances, and Earth’s axial tilt never veers too far from the current value of 23.5°, where 0° would mean the axis was perpendicular to the plane of Earth’s orbit around the sun.
"However, Jack Lissauer, a theoretical astrophysicist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffet Field, California, is much more optimistic. Together with Jason Barnes, a physicist at the University of Idaho, Moscow, and John Chambers, a theoretical astrophysicist at the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism in Washington, D.C., he has carried out large numbers of detailed numerical simulations of "moon-less Earths," which show that the consequences are less dire than is generally assumed."
Science Mag: Who Needs a Moon? by Govert Schilling
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