Alan Davies

No heads up, no easy fixes.

Just the game of life wobbling in front of our eyes.

Will the tower stand or will the whole thing come crashing down?

For BBC Radio 4, this is Life Without with me, Alan Davis.

And together we'll find out if a life without the moon is game over.

Piecing together this wild scenario right alongside me are Sarah Russell, a Merit Researcher in Cosmic Mineralogy

and planetary sciences at the Natural History Museum.

And Luke Jerram, a fantastic artist who you might know from street pianos, Play Me, I'm Yours, and he's also the artist who toured the world with his stunning replica, Museum of the Moon.

Now, astronomers have a pretty good idea how the Moon was formed.

Most support the giant impact hypothesis, where the young, forming Earth collided with a smaller planet called Theia.

And yet we still treat it like a mystical switch for human behaviour, blaming full moons for madness, crime and chaos.

Well, tonight, the Moon has had enough.

It's leaving.

We're one day in, into a sky with no moon.

Luke, how do you think people will react when they realise the moon is gone?

Moonlight is often a romantic idea.

It lives on in poems and love stories and sets the mood for champagne and flowers dates, but for animals, that light and rhythm can be a matter of life or death.

Is that right, Sarah?

Grandest consequences.

Yes.