Moon Craters

The moon is by far the biggest and most easily recognizable object in earth’s atmosphere that can be perceived by the naked eye on a cloudless night. It is hypothesized that it came into existence nearly 4.5 billion years ago, from residual debris after a planetary body collided with earth. Although, considered the runner-up to the sun as the second brightest object in the sky, its illumination is deceitful, insomuch as the moon is not a source of light, but instead reflects the sun’s illumination from the half of the moon that is in direct alignment with the sun at that time. More readily identified as a satellite of the earth rather than as a planet itself or even a star, it has a diameter a quarter of the size of earth’s size and it

Have you ever considered that the moon may not be exactly what it seems to be? Science says that the moon was a result of the Earth colliding with another planet, causing a rocky mass to break free from the earth and be pulled into orbit by the force of gravity. Conspiracy theorists have considered the possibility that the moon may be something more than just a rocky mass orbiting the earth. A theory that has been created regarding our moon is called The Hollow Moon Theory. This theory tries to prove that the moon may just be a cover or a protective layer around an alien's UFO. It may be hard for some to go against scientific research, but there is a possibility that something other than a collision is responsible for the formation of our moon.

Impact craters are geologic structures formed when a large meteorite, asteroid or comet smashes in to a planet or a satellite. Meteorites are small rocks in space that hit the earth's atmosphere at a high velocity. Throughout their history they have heavily bombarded all the inner bodies in our solar system. In this experiment we will use marbles as our meteorites, these will be free falling objects that will be used to copy an asteroid impact. The surfaces of the Moon, Mars and Mercury, where other geologic processes stopped millions of years ago, record this bombardment clearly. On the Earth, however, which has been

between light and shadow) from the north pole to the south pole of the moon. This is how the moon would be seen if it were on the observer’s meridian. We can use the drawing above to determine the amount of illumination and whether it is on the left or right hand side of the moon. Use the drawing above to draw the appearance of the moon in the box below.

Mimas and another Saturn moon, Rhea, have been called the most heavily cratered bodies in the Solar System. It is believed that the craters on Mimas have been around since the beginning of the Solar System. Mimas is so heavily cratered that new impacts will overwrite the old craters that were created in the past. There just is not a part of the Mimas that has not been pounded by impacts.

Conspiracy theorists have also argued that there should have been a freshly gouged crater where the lunar module’s descent engine blasted into the lunar soil. However Bizony rebuffs this myth by explaining that the powdery lunar soil was disturbed by the downward pointing jet of the exhaust, but the thrust was not enough to create a crater in the topsoil, much less even be able to penetrate the hard rocky substrate (Bizony, It was all a fake, right?, 2009). The website, moonlandinghoax.org explains that the lunar module had six-foot long landing probes under the foot pads and when they registered contact the engines would stop firing and the module would fall gently the rest of the way (Moon landing hoax). Since the engines stopped firing approximately six feet before landing, there was not enough blast pressure to create a crater. The article stated that a firecracker would have more power than the engines did after they ceased to fire (Moon landing hoax).

craters. The smaller moons of Saturn, are mostly rock and ice, and are heavily cratered.

There are many different theories about how the moon was formed. People believe different things. I believe one is more reliable than all the others. I think the Big impact theory is the most trustworthy. The Big Impact theory has many different pieces of evidence behind it. The other ones i could barely find any.

Background Research: A meteoroid is a small chunk of rock that has been broken apart from a much larger chunk of rock called an asteroid, these chunks of rock are located in between Mars and Jupiter, called the asteroid belt. When a meteoroid has been knocked out of the asteroid belt and is on it way towards earth the meteoroid is now a meteor, if the the meteor hits the ground it changes to a meteorite. When the meteorite makes contact with the ground it causes a crater to form, craters are holes on the ground made by the impact of a meteoroid coming towards earth.

In 1975, two scientists by the name of Dr. William K. Hartmann and Dr. Donald R. Davis, came up with a groundbreaking new theory on how the moon was created. Their theory stated “At the time Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago, other smaller planetary bodies were also growing. One of these hit earth late in Earth 's growth process, blowing out rocky debris. A fraction of that debris went into orbit around the Earth and aggregated into the moon” (Hartmann & Herres 1). This theory is known as the Giant Impact Theory and is the accepted theory in the scientific community of how the moon was created. Even though this theory is accepted by most, there are still some people who don’t hold this theory to be true. I agree with Davis and Hartmann’s Giant Impact Theory that a great collision occurred and created the moon. The Giant Impact Theory is supported by the lack of iron on the moon, the moon rocks from the Apollo missions, and its acceptance in the scientific community.

The first planet after the Sun, Mercury, has very similar geological features with the Earth's moon. Its surface is covered with varying sizes of craters which was used by scientists to determine the planet's age. It is said that these craters are the "scars" from asteroid and comets during the Late Heavy Bombardment Period. Measuring 1550km, the Caloris Basin is the largest crater in Mercury's surface and 14 other large crater basins were found. Although it has been identified that Mercury's surface is geologically inactive, large deposits of water ice can be found near its poles. These bodies of water ice were found on deep craters around Mercury's poles and are always in the shadows. If one side of the planet is covered with craters, another

Many believe that while Early Earth was undergoing accretion, it had a massive collision with a large body- as huge as the size of Mars (see Fig. 2.). This collision produced a shower of debris around the Earth and thrusted it into space (Grotzinger and Jordan, 2010). “According to this theory, the Earth reformed as a boy with an outer molten layer hundreds of kilometres thick- a magma ocean.” (Grotzinger and Jordan, 2010). Marshak (2007) deduced that the Moon was formed from the accretion of the debris floating around the Earth. He also suggested that the Moon’s composition resembles that of the mantle because of the way the Mars-sized body collided with the Earth. From this, we can assume that when the collision happened- it did not disturb the Earth’s iron-nickel core that was already formed. The formation of the Moon must have happened 4.51 billion years ago- between the early stages of the accretion of the Earth which was 4.56 billion years ago,) and “the formation of the oldest Moon rocks brought back by the Apollo astronauts (4.47 billion years ago,)” (Grotzinger and Jordan, 2010).

1. "Apollo Moon Rocks." Curators Chioce. Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. 15 Oct. 2007 http://www.nasm.si.edu/exhibitions/cchoice/moonrocks/moonrocks3.htm.

I) According to my previous observation with the full moon, this observation was less lit up than before. There was a small sliver of darkness that appeared now on the right side of the moon from where I was standing.

Although asteroids could destroy Earth if they come in contact with it, small meteors that