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Criteria for Estimating the Population of Meteoritic Showers *
Author(s) -
Paz Lincoln
Publication year - 1941
Publication title -
contributions of the society for research on meteorites
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1945-5100
pISSN - 0096-2813
DOI - 10.1111/j.1945-5100.1941.tb00267.x
Subject(s) - shower , population , meteorite , falling (accident) , value (mathematics) , mathematics , simple (philosophy) , statistics , fraction (chemistry) , physics , astrophysics , astrobiology , chemistry , demography , thermodynamics , medicine , philosophy , environmental health , epistemology , sociology , nozzle , organic chemistry
One of the unsettled questions in meteoritics relates to the determination of the total number, N , of meteorites falling in such showers as those of Pultusk (Poland), Estherville (Iowa), and Holbrook (Arizona). The value of N has, for obvious reasons, not been determined by counting. Partial and unsystematic counts either have been accepted as giving the true value of N or else have been corrected by arbitrarily assuming that some specified fraction of N escaped enumeration. In the present paper, several simple criteria for estimating the population of a meteoritic shower are derived by use of the theory of probability. The formulas deduced for the determination of N have been tested with satisfactory results on man‐made meteoritic showers. By the use of one of the criteria, it is shown that, for the Holbrook shower, N was almost certainly of the order of 100,000, and hence that the population of the Pultusk shower, which seems to have been a larger one even than Holbrook, probably considerably exceeded this figure. The criteria developed may be employed in many other connections.