Abstract
The cumulative size-frequency distributions of impact craters on planetary bodies in the Solar system appear to approximate a universal inverse square power law for small crater radii. In this paper, we show how this distribution can be understood easily in terms of geometrical statistics, using a de-Sitter geometry of the configuration space of circles on the Euclidean plane and on the unit sphere. The effect of crater overlap is also considered.
Author
Gibbons, G. W.; Werner, M. C.
Journal
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Paper Publication Date
December 2012
Paper Type
Astrostatistics