By the age of 80, time and natural processes leave indelible marks on a person's face. The age of the planets and their satellites is even more respectable.
Meteorites, craters and planet surface
They are 4.6 billion years old. Many events have changed their appearance. Giant plates of the earth's crust collide with each other, raising mountain ranges on the line of collision. Magma - hot molten stone - is spilled out by volcanoes from the womb of the planet, solidifying with conical volcanic mountains. If the planet has an atmosphere, then winds and rains destroy the rocks and toss sand into the sky.
Interesting fact: when a meteorite collides with mountains, they can melt from the heat released during the impact.
Meteorite craters
The surface of the planet is changing by violent interference from outer space. Asteroids, comets, or fragments of them, called meteorites, can unbidden guests burst into the planet from space, sweeping away everything in its path. Scientists call direct impacts of meteorites on the earth’s surface or the surface of another planet as a shock crater. Such a push can cause serious damage to the surface of the planet. A meteorite with a diameter of 30 meters, hit the Earth at a speed of 55,000 kilometers per hour, will cause an explosion equal in strength to the explosion of 4 million tons of dynamite or several atomic bombs.
Such a meteorite fell 25,000 years ago on Earth in the place where Arizona is now located.You can now see the trail from its fall, it is called the Barringer meteor crater or the Arizona crater and is located near the city of Winslow. The desert is disfigured by a scar - crater about 200 meters deep. The edges of the crater are raised. Around the giant pit lies a rock ejected from the depths in a collision.
What happens when a meteorite hits a planet?
This is what happens when a meteorite or other body hits a solid surface of a planet or its satellite. First, a cloud of fragments rises into the sky at high speed. At the place where the meteorite falls, the rocks are compacted and a shock wave hits the surrounding mountains. If the meteorite is large enough, then the shock wave can destroy nearby rocks and mountains.
If the meteorite is very large, the rocks and mountains can simply melt from the heat released during the impact. The rock, which struck, expand from heat and crack. Broken stones fly out of the crater. Settling to Earth, dusty rock remnants cover the vicinity of the crater (this “veil” is visible at the meteor crater). The entire explosion lasts no more than one minute.
Interesting fact: some lunar craters reach a diameter of 1000 kilometers.
Over time, the shape of the crater changes. Its walls can crumble and settle. The crater undergoes wind erosion. Through cracks, magma can seep into the bottom of the crater, fill it, and then harden. 200 craters found on Earth. Of course, in the 4.6 billion years of its existence, the Earth has experienced much more collisions with space aliens. But their traces are erased by erosion, magma or time.
There is no atmosphere on the moon, so there is neither rain nor wind.And although there were once active volcanoes on the moon, they have long been extinguished. There are no magma streams to the surface on the moon. Therefore, if the moon collides with a meteorite, then the traces of this disaster remain for a long time. Some lunar craters are 4 billion years old. Their diameters reach thousands of kilometers, but there are craters with a pinhead (from the fall of the smallest dust particles).
