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naturalethic | 10 years ago

Why are almost all impact craters perfectly circular?

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dweinus|10 years ago

I'm not a physicist, but I would hazard:

it would require a very non-spherical object to create an a-circular crater because ground resistence forces material to move primarily parallel to the surface of the planet/moon, which tends to regularize the shape. Any atmosphere will make the impacting object more spherical through resistance. Lastly, large bodies in space tend to spheres naturally as their mass converges by gravity.