Browsing by Author "Lyytinen, Joonas"

The possible presence of periodicity in the terrestrial impact crater data has been discussed in several papers since 1984. The authenticity of this detected periodicity data is controversial. It is possible, however, that real periodicity is present and could be detected from more accurate and complete data. In our study we created simulated different probability distributions for terrestrial impact crater record, that covered completely aperiodic and periodic impact cratering scenarios, as well as two specific combinations of these two cases, with four different impact crater age uncertainties. From these distributions we then generated simulated time series of impact craters with different numbers of craters and tested if the periodicity in the distribution could be detected using the Rayleigh method. Our analysis shows that if only one third of the terrestrial impact craters are caused by periodic cratering events, the detection of a real period in the data is very difficult and probably could not be detected even if better impact crater data became available. If two thirds of the craters are caused by periodic impacts, detection is possible, but would require substantially better data than which is currently available. We conclude that the periodicities reported so far in the impact crater data are not caused by real physical phenomena.