The bouncing-capture hypothesis explains the majority of the lunar maria as the result of a portion of Orientale’s pyroclastic eruption falling back to the surface of the Moon. The large, circular mare-filled basins, such as Imbrium, Serenitatis, Tranquillitatis, Crisium, Smythii, etc. are the result of the partial coalescence of the volcanic material into “maria orbs” in free fall back to the surface of the Moon – forming and filling these basins simultaneously. This interpretation of the lunar maria offers an explanation for why many of the largest, circular mare–filled basins are found lined up in a row on the surface of the Moon and organized from largest to smallest: the further downrange from Orientale, the less material available for coalescence. This great circle pattern (and size correlations) of these basins is explored in the following paper:

The Lunar Great Circle Basins’ Relationship Between Their Diameters and Distances From Orientale

Abstract

Several of the Moon’s largest basins show correlations between their locations and diameters. These include Orientale, Mare Imbrium, Mare Serenitatis, Mare Crisium, Mare Smythii, Mare Tsiolkovsky and potentially others. All of these basins lie along a lunar great circle and their diameters decrease starting at Mare Imbrium and moving eastward across the surface of the Moon to Mare Tsiolkovsky. This pattern appears far from random which is contrary to what might be expected under the interpretations of the late heavy bombardment scenario, which is thought to have been a millions-of-years- long cratering event. In this research, an explicit relationship is presented which relates a basin’s diameter to its distance from Orientale. This relationship possesses a coefficient of determination of 0.979. This adds further support to the idea that these basins are not randomly distributed and that some causal relationship exists between them.