Can Tidal Disruption of Asteroids Make Crater Chains on the Earth and Moon?

Abstract

Crater chains, presumably formed by weak asteroids or comets stretched apart by planetary tides, have been tentatively identified on both the Earth and Moon. By modeling tidal disruption by the Earth and Moon of “rubble-pile” bodies, we find that the Earth disrupts enough objects over the last 3.8 billion years to account for one or two lunar crater chains, but that the reciprocal production rate of terrestrial crater chains is too low to make any in observable geological history.