Why does the moon have so many craters while the Earth does not?
356083
The earth would have more craters than the moon almost, had it not developed an atmosphere.  The atmosphere burns up anything trying to pass through it into a tiny meteorite.\n\nSame reason that mercury is battered with the asteroids.
438648
The Moon has a surface area of 152 million square kilometers.\nThe Earth is 13.5 times larger.
869305
The appearance of the Moon is also dependent on the fact the the Earth is rotating on its axis. Objects appear at the horizon, drift overhead and slip below the horizon again. that is the main reason the Moon looks as it does.\n\n;-D The Moon is romantic! Let's not forget that!
918513
Heat transfer in the Earth's atmosphere is dominated by radiation effects, rather than thermal conduction or convection.\n\nIt's complicated, but on average the Earth's surface is a few tens of degrees warmer than the surface of the Moon, which receives the same amount of sunlight, and of course has no atmosphere.
629239
because the earths atmosphere acts like a lens, so the lower the sun or moon to the horizon then the larger they appear :)
168808
The moon is not white. It is light grey and reflects alot less light than earth. I merely looks white because of the tremendous amount of sunlight that falls upon it. If the moon had the same albedo as earth it would be 5 times as bright!\n\nAbout 17% of the moons surface (the Mare) is basalt, that is solidified lava. It is similar in composition as volcanic rocks from Hawaii and Iceland. The lunar highlands (the lighter parts that make up 83% of the surface) are made out of a light colored rock called anorthosite. The Adirondacks in the eastern US are made up of the same stuff.\n\nThe mare basalts has alot of iron, manganes and titanium in it. The anorthosite has a lot of calcium and aluminium. The anorthosite is therefore not only lighter in color but also in weight.
48821
It is an optical illusion.  The moon appears to be larger because you are comparing it to smaller things.  They have taken very careful measurements and determined that, in fact, the moon is the same size no matter where it is in the sky.\n\nThere was a theory for a while that the moon appears larger because objects in general appear larger when you look horizontally at them.  I have to admit I have a soft spot for that theory no matter how hare-brained it may seem.  After all, your heart jumps when you look down (and maybe up?) a long cliff, but you don't get the same effect when you imagine the same situation in a horizontal context.  I've heard this theory was mostly debunked, so I can't seriously suggest it anymore.
882017
No one who has answered so far got it right.  The answer is TRUE, and the reason is because the moon rotates on its axis in exactly the same amount of time it takes it to make one revolution around the earth.  No one seems to get this.
435638
The reason why they are more prevelant on the near side of the moon is because the Earth shields that side from meteoric impacts.\n\nSince the same side always faces Earth, the other side doesn't have the protection of the massive earth to suck up all the inbound meteors.  Thus, there are more impacts on the far side of the moon and more craters and less maria.
221112
The moon was created when a planetesimal the size of mars smashed into the protoearth some 4,5 billion years ago. A portion of earths crust was cast out into an orbit around earth where if formed the moon. This is why the moon is lacking in heavier materials like iron while its composition is very similar to the rock that we find on Hawaii and Iceland. This theory also explains why the moon is almost completely void of volatiles like water, nitrogen and carbonaceous minerals.
360341
We have an atmosphere and weather.  That is always changing the surface of the earth.  Erosion takes place and over time things flaten out.\nIn other cases the craters are still there, they just happen to be so large the only way we see them is through pictures from satellites.  The vegitation also help mask the craters
817223
Maybe because the sea is so big, very big, unimaginably big that we don't know as much about the oceans as we do about the surface of the Moon. There is so much we don't know about the sea because we are not designed for this environment
974494
Actually the Moon is a rather poor reflector, with only 7% of light hitting it being reflected.  That is defined as an albedo of 7.  Earth by contrast has an albedo of 35, the increase being due to ice caps and clouds being extremely good reflectors.  Since the Earth is about 4 times the size of the Moon, its surface area is about 16 times as great.  With an albedo 5X greater than the Moon's and a surface 16X the Moon's, at comparable distances Earth is 90 times brighter than the Moon.  One deep space probe actually looked back and photographed the two together, and the Moon is barely visible in the original photo.
1016790
It's because your mind sees the moon in proportion to landscape features when it is low.  It's kind of an optical illusion - it's not really bigger but your mind interprets it as bigger.
320584
Yes, it's only a matter of time.  Scientists are finding more and more places on Earth that are actually meteor craters.  They have found that Meteor Crater in Arizona actually was created by one, that a large valley in Germany is actually a large meteor crater, that the dinosaurs were killed off when a meteor hit the Yucatan peninsula, etc., etc.  The only reason they don't show up as well on Earth is because of erosion.  But if there is shocked quartz nearby, a meteor has hit, because it is not found naturally, but is caused by a meteor strike.  There are hundreds, if not thousands, of orbit-crossing meteors, so it is only a matter of time before another one gets us.
830739
http://www.msnucleus.org/membership/html/k-6/uc/solar_system/4/ucss4_2a.html\n\nSome lunar craters are cut by rills, which are cracks in the surface. Rills may be faults, possibly caused by ancient tectonic activity or cooling processes.\n\nWeathering is indeed done on the moon by the intense Solar Radiation that bombards the lunar surface daily.  Temperatures on the Lunar surface vary widely on location. Although beyond the first few centimeters of the regolith the temperature is a nearly constant -35 C (at a depth of 1 meter), the surface is influenced widely by the day-night cycle. The average temperature on the surface is about 40-45 C lower than it is just below the surface.\n\nIn the day, the temperature of the Moon averages 107 C, although it rises as high as 123 C. The night cools the surface to an average of -153 C, or -233 C in the permanently shaded south polar basin. A typical non-polar minimum temperature is -181 C (at the Apollo 15 site).\n\nThe Lunar temperature increases about 280 C from just before dawn to Lunar noon.  Average temperature also changes about 6 C betwen aphelion and perihelion.  Meaning the closest and furthest the moon comes to; and far away it gets from the sun.\n\nLunar Temperature Differences\nhttp://www.asi.org/adb/m/03/05/average-temperatures.html\n\nLunar Soil\nhttp://epsc.wustl.edu/admin/resources/meteorites/regolith_breccia.html\n\nLunar Regolith and Fragmental Breccias\n\nRegolith is the name given to the layer of unconsolidated material at the surface of a planet – the loose stuff that overlies the solid rock.  On Earth, soil is part of the regolith, and lunar regolith is consequently often called “soil.”
514886
the moon won't blow up.  it is geologically inactive.  that means that its just a dead rock up there orbiting the earth.