The search for giant impact signatures

Over the past few decades several thousand extrasolar planets have been detected and yet the process that forms these planets remains unobserved. One of the fundamental processes in the formation of planets is collisions. In this talk I will discuss using collisions to track planet formation by looking for indirect tracers or signatures of large collisions towards the end of solar system formation. I will present numerical simulations of these large impacts and connect the numerical results with observations or both extreme planets and dusty debris. I will end by speculating why we have detected fewer signatures of large impacts than we might have expected.