Ah, yes, the moon. To it, over it, shooting for it. Blue, green. Pies, faces, shines, lighting. And I haven't even gotten to all the Luna-based concepts. Earth's moon plays a significant role in our culture, language and thoughts. But does it ... you know ... matter? If it disappeared in the blink of an eye tomorrow (and for discussion's sake let's assume it does so nonviolently), would we even notice? Would we even care? Well, it depends .... Do you like tides? Gravity -- at least the Newtonian kind -- is pretty straightforward: The closer you are to something, the stronger its pull of gravity. So stuff that's closer to the moon gets a stronger gravitational tug, and stuff that's farther away gets a weaker one. Easy-peasey. When looking at the effects of the moon on the Earth, you can essentially boil it down to three parts: The Earth itself, the ocean-close-to-the-moon and the ocean-far-from-the-moon. On any given day, the ocean closest to the moon gets a bonus gravitational pull, so