Crater - what is it?

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:47

Volcanoes are majestic and powerful creations of nature. They, active and inactive, exist from the beginning of time to this day, as if forcing humanity to “listen” to the changes taking place inside the Earth itself. After all, more than once in world history, entire cities were buried under the thickness of volcanic ash and magma, and civilizations were doomed to death! Every volcano has a crater. This is a funnel-shaped depression that is located on its top or slope.

Origin and structure

The word itself comes from the ancient Greek "chalice, a vessel for mixing wine and water." By analogy, the shape of education is similar to a bowl or funnel. Through it, magma erupts from inside the volcano. A crater is a natural formation that has a diameter of several meters to several kilometers. Its purpose is the withdrawal of magma. In temporarily inactive volcanoes, the crater is a kind of outlet for the withdrawal of gaseous gases accumulated in the depths.mixtures. This formation is equipped with special channels leading to the middle and down the volcano, allowing free eruption. In "extinct" volcanoes, the channels sometimes "overgrow", and the crater becomes rather a decorative formation, sometimes used by people for ritual and other purposes.

On the Moon

With the ability of mankind to explore the Moon with the most powerful telescopes, the dream of taking a closer look at it has come true. It turned out that there are also craters. The lunar crater is, in fact, a ring mountain. This cup-shaped recess has a relatively flat bottom and is surrounded by an annular shaft. According to modern science, almost all lunar craters are of "impact" origin. That is, they were formed as a result of the mechanical impact on the surface of the Moon of meteorites that fell mainly in ancient times. Only a small part of the craters of the Earth's satellite is still considered by some scientists to be of volcanic origin.

A bit of history

It is known that Galileo first discovered lunar formations with the help of a telescope he made (small, about three times magnification). He also gave the phenomenon a name - a crater. This definition has remained in scientific use to this day. But the opinions of scientists about the origin of craters have changed dramatically: from the impact of space ice and volcanic formation to "impact". Modern science accurately defines the latter as the mode of origin of the vast majority of craters on the Moon. By the way,similar formations have been found on other planets of our system, for example, on Mars.