Cracks in the lunar crust, or caused by an asteroid impact, will endanger the nearest Earth

For a long time, Jupiter has helped the earth to block the impact of countless cosmic celestial bodies. Because Jupiter has a strong gravitational force, the celestial bodies will pass around Jupiter before hitting the earth, and will be attracted by Jupiter's strong gravitational force instead of reaching the earth. But occasionally there will be some fish that slip through the net and are not caught by Jupiter. And the celestial bodies not captured by Jupiter will continue to fly to the earth.

But even so, we don't have to worry, because we still have the Moon, which is our second barrier to Earth. Most of what we see is the front side of the moon, that is, the side facing us. This side is relatively smooth and flat, but if we look at the back side of the moon, we will find that the back side of the moon is densely packed with a large number of impact craters.

At the same time, people also found an incredible phenomenon, that is, cracks appeared on the surface of the moon. Scientists inferred that cracks began to appear on the surface of the moon due to long-term and frequent impacts. The depth of the entire crack reached 20 kilometers, and the length of the crack reached If it continues for hundreds of kilometers, the crust of the moon will be completely broken, which means that the moon will undergo great changes, and the earth will also be affected.

In order to better study the cracks on the lunar surface, people used a computer to simulate the lunar data. During the simulation, it was found that the cracks on the lunar surface were most likely caused by a celestial body with a diameter of about one kilometer. The celestial body's impact on the moon created a 20-kilometer-deep gap in the moon's surface. But it did not end. After that, the moon ushered in the impact of a larger celestial body. The diameter of the celestial body reached 10 kilometers. This time the impact caused the cracks in the moon to extend farther, reaching 300 kilometers.

However, the moon is not just a single crack, most of the independent cracks are extended in the continuous impact, and finally get closer and closer, and finally the cracks that originally existed alone begin to connect to form larger individual cracks. Moreover, both length and depth are deepening, and it cannot be ruled out that the cracks will all connect together and penetrate the lunar crust.

The reason for the above situation is not because the volume of the celestial body that hit the moon is too large. If the volume of the celestial body is too large, think about the meteorites that fall to the surface of the earth after passing through the earth's atmosphere. The volume is very small, although After the consumption and gasification of the atmosphere, it is necessary to know that the earth's atmosphere is limited, and the volume of celestial bodies that can be consumed is also limited. Therefore, the volume of meteorites that fall to the earth is originally small.

Therefore, most of the celestial bodies that fall to the moon are also small in size, but they can smash the moon out of cracks because the mass and density of the moon are relatively small, and the celestial bodies of the same level fall to the earth and fall to the moon. The effect is different. Falling to the earth may just form a deep crater, but if it falls to the moon, it will cause the lunar crust to break.