Exploring the marvel that are mountains on the Moon

Unlike the millions of years it takes for most mountains on Earth to form, lunar mountains crop out near-instantly, geologically speaking.Mountains on our dear Earth primarily form when two colliding plates of Terra’s crust lift up volumes of rock, slowly creating an elevated landform. Over millions of years, wind, water, and gravity erode these uplifted sections, shaping their surface as the mountains we are familiar with today. But the Moon has no plate tectonics, atmosphere, or running water. How then does it boast mountains several kilometers tall? For instance, Zeeman Mons on the Moon’s farside peaks as high as Mount Everest.The answer lies in the one of Luna’s most apparent features: craters. Most lunar craters are small and bowl-shaped, formed by asteroids and comets impacted the lunar surface. This shape persists for crater sizes up to about 20 kilometers but craters larger than that display variety due to more complex physics. When giant asteroids or comets strike the Moon,…