Why does the moon have so many craters when Earth doesn’t have, even though Earth’s gravity is stronger and it should be the one attracting the comets?
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An ELI5 attempt here.
Earth does get more meteors and other space rocks. However, Earth has things that erase the craters.
1. Earth has the atmosphere. Air doesn’t seem like much, but the Earth has so much air, it becomes very powerful. So when a rock hits the Moon, it makes a crater. When a rock starts to get close to the Earth, the air turns the rock-hard meteor into something softer and spread out, so most don’t make a big crater.
2. When the rocks are big enough to make a big crater on the Earth, we have water and wind. This acts like giant sandpaper to ‘smooth out the hole’ over time. For examples of holes that are ‘wearing out’ look at the Yosemite Caldera (volcano), and the Chicxulub crater, which scientists didn’t even know was a crater.
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