Hi Sterling-
I'm don't agree with your argument for basaltic maria on the Earth side of
the Moon. There are plenty of big impact craters on the far side. The
difference is that the lunar crust is 40km thicker on the far side than on
the near side (100km vs 60km). It takes a heck of a lot bigger impact to
punch through the far side crust to the (once) molten interior.
Chris
*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sterling K. Webb" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Chris Peterson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>;
<[email protected]>; "Dawn & Gerald Flaherty"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Graham Christensen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, June 26, 2005 7:26 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] fire flies or flying fires
Basically, anything orbiting the Earth inside the Moon's orbit is
long-term
unstable because the Moon perturbs inner objects to increase their
eccentricity
without limit until they smack into... the Moon!
This is why all the gigantic lava-flowed impact basins are on the side
of
the Moon that faces the Earth and there's so few on the far side. Most of
those
ancient huge impactors were probably in orbit around the Earth back in its
wild
and woolly youth!
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