why are all craters on the moon round? You would think that most would look elongated or elliptical depending on the angle of impact.

Question

why are all craters on the moon round? You would think that most would look elongated or elliptical depending on the angle of impact.

In: 498

Answer 1

You would think, but that’s not how high velocity impacts work. It works more like throwing a pebble in a pond than in a pit of sand, the energies are so high the rock behaves like liquid and quite a lot of it outright vaporizes. Of course if the angle is very shallow you do get elliptical craters, but reasonably high angle impacts are all pretty circular.