[meteorite-list] fire flies or flying fires

[Chris Peterson]

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" <kelly at bhil.com>
To: "Chris Peterson" <clp at alumni.caltech.edu>; 
<Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>; "Dawn & Gerald Flaherty" 
<grf2 at verizon.net>; "Graham Christensen" <voltage at telus.net>
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!