New Moon craters occurring faster than we thought

BY: Patrick Jones

When we gaze up at the sky and look at the moon, we often assume she's got the same marks on her face that she's always had -- but we'd be wrong.

Perhaps the moon's surface is struck by debris, but we tend to assume the face of the moon looks more or less the same. We'd be wrong. Turns out the moon's surface shows everything it's been through.

This is because it doesn't have an atmosphere and so there's no safety net to burn up things that may come its way. To put it into context, NASA reports that Earth is hit pretty often with more than 100 tons of space debris daily.

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The reason we don't realize this is because of our protective atmosphere, as well as the speed at which these things come, between 7 and 45 miles per second, generates enough friction to turn anything into a ball of fire.

Those that have been keeping an eye on our closest space neighbor are reporting that the moon is developing craters at a much faster rate than they expected.

Though the surface of the moon is rapidly showing more and more age, it doesn't look a day over 4 billion years old.