Getting better dates for
impact craters on the Moon, for instance, can help establish whether the Solar System experienced a cataclysmic meteorite bombardment 4 billion years ago.
«For reasons that we're not totally sure about, the same properties can arise from the scattering of rocky ejecta on the blocky terrain of young
impact craters on the moon,» Campbell notes.
Not exact matches
Those
craters on the
moon, mercury etc, obviously created by meteoric
impact (asteroids) in the «pre-sin» universe..
Many scientists think these permanently shadowed regions, such as the floors
on impact craters in the
Moon's polar regions, could hold large deposits or water ice.
Beneath the water and sediment, the
impact scar looks strikingly similar to Schrödinger
crater on the far side of the
moon.
The data provide a clearer picture of dents
on the
moon's surface formed by
impact craters, researchers report October 30 in Science Advances.
Furthermore, Schultz's work suggests fragments from these giants could account for a many of the
impacts that occurred during a period called the Late Heavy Bombardment, which occurred from about 3.8 billion years ago to around 4 billion years, when scientists think most of the
craters we see
on the
Moon and Mercury were formed.
A massive
impact on the
Moon about 4 billion years ago left a 2,500 - mile
crater, among the largest known
craters in the solar system.
When the Voyager 2 spacecraft flew past Jupiter and its
moons in 1979, it showed that Europa's surface is surprisingly free of
impact craters, which suggests it is somehow recycling the ice
on its surface.
They also constrained the strength of Phobos based
on results from simulations of the 10 - kilometer diameter Stickney
impact crater, which formed in the past when a rock rammed into Phobos without quite smashing the
moon apart.
When a real meteorite collides with a planet or a
moon, it not only creates a
crater but often explodes
on impact.
The
cratering record
on the
moon provides a proxy for similar
impacts by interplanetary debris such as comets and asteroids
on Earth, the effects of which have largely been erased by billions of years of erosion and geologic activity.
The kind of asteroid needed to form the Martian dichotomy would fall in between that size and those of the rocks that formed other large
craters, such as the South Pole — Aitken
impact basin
on the
moon and the Hellas Basin in Mars's southern hemisphere, both more than 1,30 miles (2,000 kilometers) wide.
Those three mountains are actually the central peaks of the
crater Bhabha, a 64 kilometer (40 mile) wide
impact scar
on the far side of the
Moon.
A NASA spacecraft charting the topography of the
moon in exceptional detail has produced a catalogue of lunar
craters that traces billions of years of
impact history
on the
moon.
But the buildup of heat from the decay of radioactive elements in the interior then remelted parts of the mantle, which began to erupt onto the surface some 500 million years after the
Moon's formation, pooling in
impact craters and basins to form the maria, most of which are
on the side of the
Moon facing the Earth.
Those results set the age boundary for the oldest terrains
on Mercury to be contemporary with the so - called Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB), a period of intense asteroid and comet
impacts recorded in lunar and asteroidal rocks and by the numerous
craters on the
Moon, Earth, and Mars, as well as Mercury.
CRATER CRAZE Images captured by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter from 2009 to 2015 revealed 222 new
impact craters (in yellow)
on the
moon.
Astronomers have long known that the
craters visible
on moons were caused by the
impact of other bodies, billions of years ago.
The
moon is a cold, dry orb whose surface is studded with craters and strewn with rocks and dust (called Figure Meteor Crater, Arizona, is a recent impact crater similar to those found on the M
moon is a cold, dry orb whose surface is studded with
craters and strewn with rocks and dust (called Figure Meteor
Crater, Arizona, is a recent
impact crater similar to those found
on the
MoonMoon.
Figure Meteor
Crater, Arizona, is a recent
impact crater similar to those found
on the
Moon.
The record of history, as written in the many
impact craters on Earth and the
moon, demonstrate that it is just a matter of time before astronomers discover a near Earth object (NEO) headed toward a collision with Earth.