Astronomy Talk: Violent Events in Rocky Planetary Systems

This is a recoding of a Keck Observatory Astronomy Talk given by Dr. Benjamin Zuckerman, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy at UCLA. His talk, ‘Violent Events in Rocky Planetary Systems: Implications for the Fate of Technological Civilizations, Including Our Own’, was given on October 25, 2012 at the Gates Performing Arts Center at Hawaii Preparatory Academy.

The W. M. Keck Observatory operates two 10-meter optical/infrared telescopes on the summit of Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The twin telescopes feature a suite of advanced instruments including imagers, multi-object spectrographs, high-resolution spectrographs, integral-field spectroscopy and a world-leading laser guide star adaptive optics system which cancels out much of the interference caused by Earth’s turbulent atmosphere. The Observatory is a private 501(c) 3 non-profit organization and a scientific partnership of the California Institute of Technology, the University of California and NASA.