Cool new lunar map - is there any significance to the number / placement of Copernican Craters?

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

 

Stumbled on this today:

https://gizmodo.com/incredible-new-map-of-moon-shows-its-every-nook-and-cra-1843029458

 

Apparently the Copernican "from a billion years ago to today" Craters are all colored yellow in the images.  The thing that's immediately interesting to me is that there are more Copernican craters on the face of the moon we see rather than the 'dark side.'  Can anyone explain why this is?  i.e. is there a process involved that makes it more likely for a meteor to strike the inner face of the moon than the far side?

[Shpaget]

I don't see a significant difference.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

5 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

I don't see a significant difference.

Huh - my rough count showed a 3-1 difference.  

[Wjolcz]

36 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Huh - my rough count showed a 3-1 difference.  

Not to inslut you, but I have a friend who's colourblind. He's a great guy and all, but would have a lot of trouble counting yellow craters on a map like this.

I remember one time in Maths when there was yellow chalk on green blackboard (so, greenboard?). He thought the chalk was green.

Also, I think that the near side is much better studied since it's visible all the time. If there's any difference it might be because of that.

HOWEVER, if what you're saying is true perhaps it's caused by the fact that craters in mares don't overlap as much (since the mares are much younger) as on the other side where the craters overlap and 'mix' tofether since the far side is far older than mares. Maybe that's because craters are harder to study and distinguish from one another, therefore less Copernican ones.

Edited April 24, 2020 by Wjolcz

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

2 minutes ago, Wjolcz said:

Not to inslut you, but I have a friend who's colourblind. He's a great guy and all, but would have a lot of trouble counting yellow craters on a map like this.

I remember one time in Maths when there was yellow chalk on green blackboard. He thought the chalk was green.

Grin - hard to insult a guy who's painfully aware of his own limitations!  But tbh - colorblindness isn't one of my many faults.  

 

So - back to the image; if you enlarge it, you can see approximately the same number of large yellow-shaded craters on both hemispheres... but quite a bit more small to mid-sized yellow craters on the near side.  Certainly they're easier to spot against the basaltic plains (Mares) of the near side, but again it looks like there's 3x as many.

 

*Note: Fully willing to be shown that my perception is inaccurate - which in itself would be an answer to my OP question!

[Wjolcz]

3 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Certainly they're easier to spot against the basaltic plains (Mares) of the near side

I think this is likely. Just edited my post to include this.

[Shpaget]

Ok, I did a little crude color manipulation to bring out the yellow. Eh...

 

There is a difference, but generally speaking the sides look very different to each other. Why are craters from this particular period of special interest to you, as opposed to the whole thing?

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Once the bombardment slows down and the system is a little less chaotic, it becomes a bit easier to understand. 

I've always kind of thought that the Moon was the Earth's shieldmaiden - but it looks like the favor isn't returned; in fact it looks like the blows the earth slips can be 'lensed' into the moon 

Of course looks can be deceiving - so I ask folks smarter than I 

Edited April 24, 2020 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[kerbiloid]

Those two and a half linear series on the left moon, looking like "three in row" and like "five in arc with three small more curling aside" look promising to find something fallen.

Also those three plus on below look like Martian greatest mountains.
Generated by same planet building scrtipt?
Doesn't it show that we live in Matrix...

Edited April 25, 2020 by kerbiloid

[RCgothic]

It's probably a coincidence.

The moon has only been tidally locked for around a hundred million years. Before then there wasn't a *near* and *far* side.

So if the Copernican craters are up to 10x older than that, the moon being totally locked can't have had that much effect unless they're biased very young.

Edited April 25, 2020 by RCgothic

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, RCgothic said:

The moon has only been tidally locked for around a hundred million years. Before then there wasn't a *near* and *far* side.

It should be tidally locked almost all its life, as in any case (impact or capture-and-tear), it should be formed so.

Edited April 25, 2020 by kerbiloid

[RCgothic]

My mistake. Google gave me a misleading answer to the question "how long did it take for" instead of "how long has it been".

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

21 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

It should be tidally locked almost all its life, as in any case (impact or capture-and-tear), it should be formed so.

Theia is a proposal to explain the similarity of earth and lunar rocks...  And from what I have seen it makes sense for it to cool into a tidally locked body 

 

I'm not familiar with capture and tear - but two questions:

* if the moon was captured wouldn't it have retained some of the original pre-capture spin until the denser 'side' settled towards the earth? 

* why do we need a capture scenario at all? (whether impact or capture) - isn't it possible for two co-orbiting bodies to coalesce from same primordial dust with the larger retaining its angular momentum and spin while the smaller becomes tidally locked? 

[kerbiloid]

2 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

* if the moon was captured wouldn't it have retained some of the original pre-capture spin until the denser 'side' settled towards the earth? 

* why do we need a capture scenario at all?

The capture hypothesis presumes that the proto-Moon had been captured and teared apart at the Roche distance.
The earthmost side of its mantle and the iron core (both melted) had fallen down (actually formed a dense ring for about a millenia, then the equatorial magmatic ocean), while the upper side (the upper tidal hump, including the remains of the core, had formed what we now call Moon.
After getting the recoil and being above the Roche limit it started getting farther and farther rather than fall.
So, actually this hypothesis differs from the impact one only in one place: did it scratch the Earth then was destroyed or vice versa.

The capture scenario explains the similarity of the Moon physical parameters and its physical parameters at the Roche distance, and as well the Earth rotation and equatorial tilt, and some other nuances. Also it explains the process of the core extraction and continental platforms creation. Unlike the impact badaboom hypothesis, it describes a long process (because the captured proto-Moon material was falling and sinking in magma for millenia rather than in one shot).
Its weak part is that the proto-Moon body (or Theia if you prefer) could be hardly (but not impossibly) captured from the close orbit unless it includes, say, another on the near-Earth orbit, say, a smaller satellite, causing the road incident and being destroyed.

Edited April 26, 2020 by kerbiloid