The moon is heavily cratered...Why isnt the earth?

Question

The Moon is heavily cratered, but the Earth which "lives next door" is NOT. Why?

The active geology and weather on Earth destroy traces of impacts over millions of years.

All objects from space (no matter what their size) burn up in the Earth's atmosphere.

The magnetism of the Moon is more likely to attract metallic objects to hit it.

The Earth is heavily cratered, but all the craters are under the ocean.

The craters on the Moon are the result of active volcanoes; the Earth has few volcanoes compared to the Moon.

Answer 1

The first answer is true.

The 2'nd is not quite true. There are lots of things that get thru the atmosphere. Up in northern AZ is a place called 'meteor crater' where one about the size of a house (when it hit the ground) landed some 30,000 years ago. (You can find pictures of it on the web) I've seen it and it's pretty impressive ☺

The 3'rd answer is pure BS.

The 4'th answer isn't quite true. There are a few craters on the ocean floor, but they tend to erode as fast as the ones on the land.

The 5'th answer is more BS.

HTH ☺


Doug

Answer 2

The first two are right. The last three are completely wrong.

The Earth has more gravity than the moon. Therefore it will attract more meteors of all kinds.

The ocean floor would be less likely to have impact craters than land because anything hitting the ocean would have the impact absorbed by all that water before it reaches the floor.

The moon has no active volcanoes. It is a dead world.

** edit ** the last poster is right about number 2. Most meteors burn up but not all of them.

Answer 3

Geology and weather.. to a lesser extent atmosphere.

Something that was small and would form an impact crater on the Moon might burn up uppong entry on Earth.

Answer 4

1. Many of them burn up in our atmosphere and never reach the surface, but not all of them.

2. The moon acts like a shield and prevents many of them from impacting earth.

3. Because we have an atmosphere some of them skip off of it(like a stone skipping off of water)

4. the weather and active geology of our planet does erase many traces of them over time.

Answer 5

The first one is most plausible..
The moon is not volcanic.
Some craters on earth are evident from satellite/altitude photography...
Not all space debris is magnetic..besides,the earth would have a greater effect on nearby bodies..
A large enough space body could remove or damage the atmosphere..
The earth has gravity,tectonic plate shifting,an active atmosphere,and is 70% water to cover non land debris..

Answer 6

I think I see what you're getting at.
I truly believe that all the facts scientist tell us about the past is all wrong.
None of it makes seance that the moon doesn't have life.
When the moon should of got a chunk of life that survived as well as volcanic organisms can live in the volcano's then life should still continue on the moon.It must of got a piece of earths atmosphere.
But maybe they are completely wrong.Maybe the moon never hit the earth like some scientist claim.

Answer 7

The moon has no atmosphere, whereas the Earth does. Meteorites and asteroids just burn up in Earth's atmosphere, but just crash into the moon, due to its lacking an atmosphere.

Answer 8

extremely, Earth might have as much as 3 moons. the main at the instant chanced on, called Cruithne, is a few kind of icy asteroid in an exceptionally weird and wonderful orbit that makes it, in easy terms arguably, a moon of Earth. the 2nd such "moon," in accordance to a narrative on NPR's Wait Wait do no longer tell Me might actually be an previous and apparently untracked little bit of area hardware.

Answer 9

The atmosphere prevents most debris from hitting the surface.
Long time erosion obscures most of the large impacts

Answer 10

The atmosphere protects us to a certain extent and erosion erases traces of old craters.