The crater is what?

Volcanoes are majestic and powerful creatures of nature. They, acting and inactive, have existed from the beginning of time to this day, as if forcing humanity to "listen" to the changes taking place within the Earth itself. After all, more than once already in world history entire cities were buried under the thick of volcanic ash and magma, and civilizations are doomed to perish! Each volcano has a crater. This is a groove in the form of a funnel that is on its top or slope.

Origin and structure

The word itself comes from the ancient Greek "bowl, a vessel for mixing wine and water." By analogy, the form of education is similar to a bowl or funnel. Through it, magma erupts from within the volcano. The crater is a natural formation, having a diameter of several meters to several kilometers. Its purpose is to infer the magma. In temporarily inactive volcanoes, the crater is a kind of outlet for the withdrawal of gaseous mixtures accumulated in the bowels. This formation is equipped with special channels leading to the middle and down of the volcano, allowing a free eruption. In the "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 possibility of mankind to explore the moon with the help of powerful telescopes, the dream was realized closer to it. It turned out that there are also craters here. The lunar crater is, in fact, a ring mountain. This cup-shaped depression has a relatively flat bottom and is surrounded by a ring-shaped shaft. According to the data of modern science, almost all lunar craters have a "shock" origin. That is, they were formed as a result of mechanical impact on the surface of the Moon meteorites, fallen, mainly in the distant past. Only a small fraction of Earth's craters are still considered by some scientists to be of volcanic origin.

A bit of history

It is known that Galileo first discovered the lunar formations with the help of his telescope (a small, about a threefold increase). He also appropriated the name of the crater. This definition has remained in scientific use and to this day. But the opinions of scientists about the origin of craters changed drastically: from the impact of space ice and volcanic formation to "shock". Modern science accurately determines the latter as a way of origin of the vast majority of craters on the Moon. By the way, similar formations are found on other planets of our system, for example, on Mars.