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What are the main reasons there are so few impact craters on Earth compared to the Moon

User Mad Marvin
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The main reasons for having few impact craters on Earth compared to moon is due to the presence of atmosphere, water bodies and tectonic activities.

Step-by-step explanation:

Impact craters are formed on the surface of any object when another very high velocity object hits the surface of the particular object. As force exhibited by any object is directly proportional to the product of mass and acceleration of the object.

In case of moon or other natural satellites, there are no means of reducing the acceleration or mass of the incident high velocity object. But in earth, the presence of different layers of atmosphere causes sufficient friction to reduce the size as well as acceleration of the impeding high velocity object.

Then the presence of larger volume of water bodies on the Earth's surface reduces the chance of hitting on land areas. The third important factor reducing the impact craters are the variation in tectonic plates which helps in keeping only recent impacts on the Earth's surface and erase the old impacts.

So the presence of different layers of atmosphere, water bodies and tectonic plats are the main reasons for having fewer impact craters on Earth compared to the Moon.

User Eabyshev
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