Why do we see so many craters on the surface of the moon, but very few on the earth?

Answer 1

70% of the earth is covered with water - most of the strikes hit the oceans

Answer 2

The moon does not have an atmosphere were as the earth has one.

Also it is believed that the moon was a huge chunk of the earth but when a huge Astrid hit the earth a large portion of the earth was knocked out and began to orbit the earth .

Another belief if that a large meteor shower hit earth and the moon creating the "oceans" on the moon or better called large fields of very small craters inside huge craters

Answer 3

One point is that the earth is something like 75% covered in water, so anything large enough to not burn up in the atmosphere has a 75% change of landing int he ocean. There are some craters on the Earth but they are huge, miles wide so clearly large enough to pass through the atmosphere.

The moon has no atmosphere or water so every object that comes near the moon will land and make a crater.

Answer 4

The craters are mostly caused by collision by meteorites.The Earth's atmosphere ususlly burns them due to friction before they hit the surface. The moon doesn't have an atmosphere to do this. Also, Most of the Earth's surface is covered with water. So, most of the ones that do hit the surface fall into the ocean and the craters are not visible.

Answer 5

The main reason, which most of you have missed, is the lack of erosion forces on the Moon. There are probably just as many meteor craters on the Earth as on the Moon, but they've been wiped out by BILLIONS of years of geological and meteorological activity. There are more than 170 known meteor craters in North America alone, but only one, the Barringer crater in Arizona, is recent enough to have not been eroded away. Some craters are only detectable by geological analysis, some are barely visible, such as the Manicouagan Crater in eastern Quebec:
http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&hl=en&ll=51.397492,-68.716736&spn=1.266364,2.568054&t=k&z=9&om=1

Answer 6

Earth has a dense atmosphere, geological activity and life, three things entirely absent on the Moon.

The atmosphere had two very important effects on craters. Firstly, it severely restricts the size of objects that can reach the surface intact. Many things simply burn up in the atmosphere due to the intense heating generated by the friction when they encounter the air. Secondly, it produces weather. Wind and rain has a strong erosive effect on the surface of our planet, and millions or billions of years of wind and rain will wear down crater rims. It is significant that the most famous impact crater on our world is smack in the middle of a desert, where there isn't much in the way of wind and virtually nothing in the way of rain.

Gelogical activity also removes signs of craters. You can lose them in subduction zones (areas where the one crustal plate slips under another to melt into the mantle), you can have them covered by new rock from volcanic eruptions, you can have them covered by water, cracked apart by earthquakes, all sorts of things.

And finally, life has its own wearing effect on craters, as plants and bacteria grow, organisms live and die, and vast layers of soil are deposited over them, wearing them down or simply obscuring them from view. Many craters are so large they can only be seen via satellite imagery, because when you're standing right in the middle of one you can't identify it as such because it's too wide.

The Moon, lacking these processes, has nothing except later impacts to wipe out the evidence of an early impact. Billions of years without geological activity, atmospheric protection, erosion by weather and life has left the Moon as a near-permanent record of a very violent period of the solar system's history. Most of the craters you see on the Moon have been there for millions or even billions of years, and date from a period called the late heavy bombardment. Earth was pelted just as much, but the protection of the atmosphere and the subsequent processes have virtually removed all the evidence of the bombardment from our world. It is there. however, if you know where to look for it.

Answer 7

C. The earth's dense atmosphere disinegrates a good portion of the objects that collide with it. Certainly not all, as evidenced by Meteor Crater in Arizona or the Yucatan Crater in Mexico.

Answer 8

In addition to the atmosphere protecting the surface from meteor strikes, the Earth is also geologically active. There are several ongoing processes like erosion and the movement of tectonic plates that either erase or alter the appearance of craters.

Answer 9

It's probably because the moon has no atmosphere to burn up the meteorites before they hit the moon. Earth on the other hand has several layers of atmosphere so the meteorites burn up before they reach Earth. There have been some meteors in the past that were too big and though it was burned up to a smaller size, it still passed the Earth's atmosphere and landed on Earth.

Answer 10

The earth's atmosphere acts as a protection of sorts against the meteors reaching the surface. Many meteors break up and burn up in earth's atmosphere before being able to reach the ground. The moon does not have that protection.

Answer 11

because the moon has a less strong atmosphere and the earth has a much stronger one when a crater hits the moon its atmosphere doesn't protect it but earths atmosphere breaks it down so when it hits earth it is only the size of a grain of sand