PHYS 103- Gowdy EXAM 3

The oxygen atom in a water molecule

carries a negative electrical charge

An advantage of carbon dioxide as the starting form of carbon for use by living things is that it

dissolves in liquid water

As of 2018, the search for near-Earth asteroids that could threaten global effects has most likely

found more than 90% of them

One difficulty with the microfossils that were found in the martian meteorite ALH84001 is that they

are too small

The Oort cloud of our Sun reaches

at least a quarter of the way to the nearest star

According to the current model of the early history of the Solar System, the formation of the Oort Cloud happened

at the same time as the the rain of comets that supplied water to the Earth and other planets

When a large interstellar cloud collapses, it usually

fragments into several smaller clouds which then form stars

A spectrum is defined to be the set of

frequencies or colors present in a light source

Sedna is thought to be

from the Inner Oort Cloud

Ultraviolet light is sometimes described as either UV-A or UV-B. The UV-B variety is supposed to be more damaging to your skin. You can conclude that of the two types, the UV-B variety has the

higher frequency

The troposphere is where one finds

hurricanes

Which of the following types of radiation has the lowest frequency on this list?

microwaves

The reason that most SETI programs choose to listen at microwave radio frequencies is that

microwaves are the most energy efficient way to send information

On Earth, the carbon that ends up as ocean sediment and limestone is

returned to the atmosphere by volcanoes when the sea floor is pulled deep into the Earth.

Which of the following planets has a system of rings made of ice-covered rocks?

saturn

The term greenhouse effect refers to

the absorption of infrared light by gases in the atmosphere

Compared to the frequency of photons absorbed during a transition from a -5ev state to a -4ev state, transitions from the -5ev state to a -2ev state would correspond to absorbing photons whose frequency is

3 times as high

The inclination angle of a planet's rotation axis is defined so that a planet that is rotating in the usual direction about an axis that is perpendicular to the plane of the solar system would have an inclination of 0 degrees , while a planet that is rotating in the opposite (retrograde) direction about an axis that is perpendicular to the plane of the solar system would have an inclination angle of 180 degrees .The inclination angle of the planet Neptune is closest to

30 degrees

In the Earths atmosphere, the percentage that is Nitrogen is roughly

80%

Which of the following discoveries would lead to the conclusion that the universe is probably filled with life, both in our own solar system, and in the planetary systems of other stars?

A few microbes with a completely alien biochemistry are found beneath the soil of Mars

Which of these is a statement of the Fermi Paradox?

Any long-lasting technological civilization should be obvious and might even be visiting us, so where are they?

Which of these moons has geysers of water shooting out through cracks in the moon, indicating a subsurface ocean?

Enceladus

Which of the following objects has a magnetic field with about ten times the intensity of the Earth's field?

Jupiter

An example of a planet which may occasionally have liquid water but retains an atmosphere of mostly carbon dioxide is

Mars

Which of the following planets does the moon Triton orbit?

Neptune

Which of the following planets or moons has an atmosphere consisting mainly of Hydrogen and Helium with some methane?

Neptune, Uranus

The Moon Charon orbits a point that is

Not inside Pluto at all

A single sugar phosphate chain with nitrogenous bases attached along it describes a molecule of

RNA

A large vortex or hurricane on Jupiter has been named

The Great Red Spot

Which of the following spacecraft is the only one to have flown past Neptune?

Voyager 2

The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft

Went into orbit around the planet Saturn and dropped a probe into Titan's atmosphere.)

The Earth's core consists of

a central core of solid iron and an outer core of liquid iron

Underneath a place where the sea floor is disappearing into a deep ocean trench, one expects there to be

a descending convection current in the Earth's mantle

Pluto rotates on its axis

about once a week

The Earth orbits nearly in the plane of the Sun's equator as do

all of the other planets

Titan has

an atmosphere whose temperature and pressure permit liquid methane

The tail of a comet always points

away from the Sun

The Tau-Tauri wind from the Sun's final collapse toward ignition

blew away the fuel that Jupiter needed to become a star

The energy that is released when hydrogen combines with oxygen to form a kilogram of water is always

exactly equal to the energy needed to separate the hydrogen and oxygen in a kilogram of water

The Oort Cloud is located

far beyond the orbit of Pluto

The range of distances of a planet from its primary star that will permit the existence of liquid water on the planet's surface is called the

habitable zone

The second most common element in the universe is

helium

The moon Ganymede is

larger than the planet Mercury but smaller than the planet Mars

The eclipse or transit photometry method of searching for exoplanets can be expected to find

less than one out of every 10 exoplanets

When the fireball of its entry into the atmosphere was spotted from a KLM airliner, asteroid 2008 TC3 had officially become a

meteor

The gravitational influence of the planets causes asteroids to

move from the asteroid belt into the inner solar system

The part of a protostar where the density first becomes low enough for light to escape is called the

photosphere

Colder air always

sinks

The Alpha Centauri star system consists of

two stars in close orbit around each other and a third star orbiting farther out