Numerical simulations and the problem of periodicity in the cratering record
1Department of Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
Abstract:
Ages of craters in the record of impacts on earth may be uniformly period, totally random, or a mixture of the two. These alternatives are studied through numerical simulation wherein time-series analysis is performed on real and simulated sequences to which random noise has been added to represent age-dating uncertainty. We conclude that the real record is most likely to have been generated by a mixture of random and periodic impacts, with the random events constituting the majority.
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