Straight-sided craters on the Moon.

[moonomaly]

I watch a lot of amateur astronomy videos on YT now that i've got into it as a hobby, we all know the Moon is an unlikely partner in space, why it's here (i think there's around five competing theories as to it's appearance in our Solar system), why it has such a low apparent density, why it's the perfect size to eclipse the Sun, transient Lunar phenomenon etc ...

One thing i find hard to explain is the hexagonal craters. A quick search brings up lots of academic resuolts, it's obviously an interesting problem to many serious researchers, how can a normal impact crater go from round to hexagonal ?

There's a reddit discussion :

 

Sorry, didn't realise links were being actively parsed! That discussion starts with (i didn't read it all) the sub-surface crack theory. I think that can be thrown out immediately since sub-surface cracks don't sporadically form heacgoanl nodes her, there and everywhere !

Three are lots of thjeories, many of them involving mineral deposits, such as Basalt, but deposits that form instantly upon an asteroid impact and organize themselves into multi-kilometre-wide hexagons? It's not The Devil's Causeway !

I know no-one here can know why some of them are hexagonal, none of us has Hubble at our fingetips, but i'd be interested to hear other theories, i've only done a quick bit of searching.

 

[John]

This link discusses similar features on the asteroid Eros:

https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2000/ast26sep_1

Barringer / Meteor Crater (mentioned in the above link) in Arizona has a shape that is not dissimilar:

 

 

[LukeSkywatcher]

Hexagons in nature are widespread from bees nests,snow flakes,compound eyes to the Giants Causeway. 

Edited January 28, 2017 by LukeSkywatcher

[John]

21 minutes ago, LukeSkywatcher said:

Hexagons in nature are widespread from bees nests,snow flakes to the Giants Causeway. 

And Saturns north pole:

 

[JohnSadlerAstro]

Interesting...are there any 'simple' explanations? I.e., ones that require less than 1 million words to explain?  

John

[LukeSkywatcher]

Brian Cox covered the hexagon shape in one of his shows. I'm sure you'll find it online. Essentially its a shape that works for most things with very little waste/gaps between. 

 

Edited January 28, 2017 by LukeSkywatcher