The Rate of Falls of Meteorites and Bolides

Abstract

We perform a statistical analysis of 926 confirmed falls of meteorites that occurred in the period 1860 to 2017. The distribution of meteorites over masses is approximated with a lognormal law. It has been shown that the mean interval between the detections of falls of Chelyabinsk-like meteorites is ~25 years. The time dependence of the annual number of meteorite falls is analyzed with the autocorrelation method. The (10–11)-year periodicity has been found for a group of H-chondrites and iron and iron-stone meteorites in the interval 1860 to 1960. The distributions of the number of recorded falls of meteorites over years, months, and time of day are compared to the respective distributions for bolides. The number of bolides is largest in 2005 and 2015, which suggests that there is a cycle 10−11 years long in the distribution of the bolide numbers over years. It has been noticed that more meteorites fall during the time interval from noon to midnight and in the spring-and-summer season. The number of recorded bolides does not depend on the time of day and season.