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Asteroids, Comets and Meteorites: Their Effects on Life on Earth
May 5, 2019 @ 10:30 AM – 11:30 AM
Mark Hammergren, Ph.D., Astronomer, Adler Planetarium
Dr. Mark Hammergren, Astronomer and Science Communicator at the Adler Planetarium, will speak on the topic, Asteroids, Comets and Meteorites: Their Effects on Life on Earth. The geological and biological history of Earth is intimately and inextricably intertwined with asteroids and their icy cousins the comets, from the very origin of our planet to the near-total mass extinction of life 66 million years ago. But human culture has also been powerfully influenced by these space visitors, incorporated not only into scientific understanding but also into folklore, religions, art, and even iconic architecture from prehistoric times through today.
Dr. Hammergren graduated with two Bachelors degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and received his Masters and PhD degrees in Astronomy from the University of Washington in Seattle. He was a postdoctoral research associate at the Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics at Lawrence Livermore National. Currently, he is also Director of the Adler’s Astro-Science Workshop, a challenging astronomy program for high school students founded in 1964. In 2009, Mark successfully hunted for meteorites in the Nubian Desert in Sudan, recovering fragments from a recently impacted asteroid.
Our guest pianist will be Ron Hill.