Brooksee83

Brooksee83 t1_j96m2ci wrote

Think of the surface as a pool of liquid and imagine a water drop landing in the pool. You typically see the middle pop back up after the original crater shape has fallen in. Link to a video example

Now realise that the surface is a solid being hit with something of immense energy. It will make a lot of the ground molten because of the energy, and act like the liquid example but will cool back to a solid in the process, so what you see is a slowing version of a droplet landing in a liquid, but eventually halting mid-formation because it's reforming as a solid.

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