Personnel directory

Benjamin Zuckerman


... Professor Emeritus
Office: PAB 3-929
Phone: (310) 825-9338
E-Mail: ben@astro.ucla.edu

Educational Background
S.B., Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1963
S.M., Aeronautics & Astronautics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1963
Ph.D., Astronomy, Harvard University, 1968

Areas of specialization

During his astronomical career Dr. Zuckerman has researched stars and planets, and the materials they were constructed from, during essentially all phases of stellar evolution from birth until death. His current focus is on planetary systems that orbit around white dwarf stars – white dwarfs represent the last stage of stellar evolution for all but a few percent of stars (these few percent die as supernovae). The Sun will become a white dwarf in another 5 billion years or so. Another aspect of Prof. Zuckerman’s interests and research, dating back to his earliest days as a professional astronomer, is technological life in the Universe.

Observation and analysis of white dwarf spectra have spawned a new field – cosmochemistry of exoplanets. Specifically, the material that is seen in the atmospheres of numerous white dwarfs, and in orbit around some of them, usually has its origins in rocky extrasolar minor planets, the building blocks of rocky planets similar to those found in our Solar System. White dwarf planetary systems inform us about various realms largely inaccessible to study of main sequence stars. Perhaps most important is precise information about the bulk elemental composition of rocky exoplanets – from white dwarf studies we now know that, typically, rocky exoplanet composition is earthlike. Also, white dwarf studies probe planetary regions from a few astronomical units outward, regions that are essentially inaccessible to the transit and radial velocity (and direct imaging) techniques for planets with anything less than the mass of giant planets.

Dr. Zuckerman recognizes that human overpopulation and overconsumption are destroying the biosphere and he expects that only catastrophes will force us to change our ways. This is why, in his seminars on life in the Universe, he refers to humans as technological rather than intelligent. “Only two things are infinite: human stupidity and the Universe, and I’m not sure about the latter”, Albert Einstein.

Even technological species that have learned how to live sustainably will, someday, face potential catastrophes, specifically the evolution of their host star to, first, a red giant and then to a white dwarf. So, as long ago as 1985, he wrote a paper titled “Stellar evolution - Motivation for mass interstellar migrations”. A few years ago, along with his UCLA colleague Prof. Brad Hansen, he published a paper focused on such migrations (see 3 rd paper in the list below), as well as one on Dyson spheres (first paper below) where the technological beings decide to stay at home rather than migrate.

Selected Publications

In addition to the above research papers, Prof. Zuckerman has edited two books that deal with exciting astronomical topics ("Extraterrestrials, Where Are They?" and "The Origin and Evolution of the Universe") and another ("Human Population and the Environmental Crisis") that concerns the major problem of our time.