THE SCALING OF IMPACT PROCESSES IN PLANETARY SCIENCES

The results of impact processes are readily apparent in almost every image of bodies in the solar system, and are recognized as one of the most important geological processes determining the morphology of those surfaces. This article reviews scaling laws for impact processes, an approach used to study such questions as how the observed shape and size of an impact crater depend on the underlying geology; how they depend on the size, composition, and velocity of the impactor; and the size distribution of the remnants of a catastrophic distruption of a body. The term scaling means to apply some relation, the scaling law, to predict the outcome of one event from the results of another. Possible approaches to determining such scaling laws include experiments, analytical solutions to the governing equations, or code calculations using those same equations. -from Author