Final: Canvas Q's

Which mission made a radar map of Venus?

Magellan

Mars appears to have long branching channels that have the appearance of being formed by a flowing liquid. Yet we know that liquids would not stay liquid in the very thin atmosphere we have on the Martian surface. So how can we explain the channels?

Mars had a thicker atmosphere long ago when the channels formed

Which planets might you expect to have seasonal cycles similar to Earth (disregarding atmosphere, temperature, planet-sun distance and orbital period)?

- Mars - Saturn - Neptune

What do scientists think are outcomes of bombardment in the early stages of the solar system?

- Mars has moons - Uranus and Neptune were pushed out to further distances from the sun - Mercury and Moon have ice

Mars has...

- frozen water - evidence of floods - weather - atmosphere - moon(s)

Jovians v Terrestrials

- jovians have rings while terrestrials do not - jovians are made of lighter elements on average than terrestrials - jovians are further from the Sun than terrestrials - jovians have more mass than the terrestrials

In 2013, a small stony asteroid collided with Earth about the Russian city of Chelyabinsk. What were the results?

- meteorite on the ground - shock waves that cracked windows and caused building damage - a fireball briefly brighter than the Sun could be seen in the sky

What kind of surface features may result from tectonics?

- mountains - volcanoes - cliffs - rift valleys

What is evidence of continental drift?

- tropical plant fossils in Greenland - similar glacial scrapes in different continents

What is true of Mars?

- we have found evidence of water existing in the distant past - the entire surface of Mars shifted with respect to the tilt when Tharsis Montes formed - the polar caps are filled with frozen carbon dioxide - spacecrafts have been landing (not crashing) on Mars since the 1970s NOT TRUE: - mars used to have an atmosphere with a composition and density similar to Earth's present atmosphere

What is the density of a planet in unit of Earth densities with 19 times the mass of Earth and 4 times the radius of Earth?

0.3

What is the density of a planet that has 5 times the mass of the Earth and 3 times the radius as Earth?

1 g/cc

Approximately how many times larger is the volume of the Sun in comparison to the Earth if one sun radius = 100 Earth radii?

1,000,000 times larger

At what size does a planetesimal start to have a sizable gravitational field that influences other objects?

10 km

How long did it take from the formation of NASA to the first lunar landing?

11 years

What is the density of a planet with a volume 12 times the volume of Earth and 5 times the mass of Earth?

2.3 g/cc - use D = M/V equation

How many times larger is the volume of a planet in comparison to Earth's volume if it has a radius 6 times larger than Earth's radius?

216

Why do we think Enceladus may have potential for life?

Cassini satellite detected organic molecules (methane) in water geysers

T/F: Most detected planets are larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune.

True

Venus doesn't have global plate tectonics like Earth. What points to this conclusion?

Venus lacks plate boundaries

How is Titan not like Earth?

at the surface, water can exist as a solid, liquid and gas

Wrinkles in Mercury's crust are from:

cooling

What criteria does Pluto not meet to be a planet?

has cleared the neighborhood around it's orbit

Of the following choices, what is required to make amino acids?

heat and methane

Saturn's excess heat is due to:

helium rain

Venus may have had oceans. What happened to all that water?

it evaporated to the upper atmosphere where ultraviolet radiation broke the water molecule allowing the hydrogen atom to escape

What does current evidence indicate about the Earth's magnetic field in the past?

it has undergone drastic changes and reversals

Where does hydrogen come from?

it was formed just after the big bang

When scientists say that an element has a half-life of say 3 hours, this means that

it will take 12 hours for most of the element to decay such that only 1/16th of it remains

In general, the further planets are from the Sun, the cooler they are. What other factor can have a significant influence on a planet's surface temperature?

its atmosphere (whether it has one and how thick it is)

What role does a planet's size play in its geological activity?

larger planets are more geologically active because they take longer to cool off

Most of Venus' surface can be described as...

lowland lava plains

Which technique did astronomers use to detect the first planet around another star like the Sun?

measure the Doppler shift of the lines in the star's spectrum and look for periodic changes in this shift due to the pull of the planet as it orbits the star

What element plays the same role on Titan as water does on Earth (existing as gas, liquid, and solid)?

methane

What is true about the Viking experiments looking for life on Mars?

microbial life was never found; one experiment strongly reacted to the topsoil

What led astronomers in the early 1900s to suspect that there might be life on Mars?

seasonal variations in dark surface markings

Why are there so few smaller craters on Venus?

smaller objects are most likely destroyed by the atmosphere before they reach the ground

Which property of the solar nebula cloud was responsible for creating the observed composition? Why are all the terrestrial worlds near the sun and the gas giants located far from the sun?

temperature

The fact that the densest materials are in the center of terrestrial planets and not even distributed throughout the planets leads scientists to conclude that

terrestrial planets must once have been hot enough to be molten (like a liquid)

What is a possible theory as to why Venus doesn't have a magnetic field?

the interior solidified after a global volcanic event long ago

The encephalization level is...

the ratio of theorized brain size to actual brain size

What mission went out to investigate Pluto and Kuiper belt objects?

New Horizons

Auroras on planets are generated from:

charged particles from sun smashing into magnetic poles

How does the volume of a planet with radius = 2/3 Earth radii compare to the Earth?

volume is 8/27th of Earth's volume

What happened to the excess CO2 on the Earth prior to life forming?

water dissolved it into the rocks

Which of the following planet configurations would be the easiest to detect?

A planet that is the size of Jupiter with an orbit the size of Mercury's orbit

The Galileo spacecraft measured that the moon Ganymede had a magnetic field, indicating that its interior was at least partially melted and warm. What do scientists think is the most likely reason for this?

Ganymede is heated by tidal forces from Jupiter

Which early mission consisted of just one astronaut?

Mercury

What planet has the fastest wind at its equator?

Neptune

How do we know the Earth has a liquid core?

S waves form earthquakes disappear when traveling through the outer core

Given the following choices, which object has a composition most similar to the Sun?

Saturn

What are the greenhouse gases?

Water, Methane, CO2

What telescope is best to find stars with dusty disks?

a large telescope that detects infrared radiation

When the Earth passes through a cometary dust tail, we would expect...

a meteor shower

Large quantities of new lava rock are emerging from the mantle to form new portions of the crust. Where does this occur?

along the length of the submarine ridges in the middle of the major oceans

What is one of the first steps towards building life on a planet?

amino acid

What causes the unusual magnetic fields on Neptune and Uranus?

ammonia molecules in the mantle of both planets

Why do we know more about Vesta than Ceres?

bits of Vesta have landed on Earth

When a star is moving towards the observer its light is...

blue shifted

Which was not accomplished by the Apollo missions?

detected water under the surface

Walter and Luis Alvarez...

discovered a connection between a mass extinction in Earth's history and an impact event that covered much of the Earth

Schiaparelli...

drew detailed maps of Mars' surface

What was most likely the cause of the formation of Valles Marineris?

early tectonics

Even though we don't exactly know how the Moon formed, the best theory of the Moon's origin based on the data is:

flyby scenario

Astronomers think that hot Jupiters formed...

further out from their star and gravitationally migrated inward towards their star

What is the only ongoing geological process on the Moon today?

impacts by micrometeoroids and very occasionally larger meteroids

In studying the surfaces of terrestrial bodies in the solar system, astronomers have learned that the number and size of craters (per unity area):

is roughly proportional to the age of the surface we are examining

What is true about the asteroid Oumuamua?

it can be interpreted as evidence that other planetary systems fling out material through gravity

From Einstein's point of view, what does mass do to space?

it creates new paths

In what way is Mars similar to Earth?

its length of day

Which of the following ways that jovian (gas giant) planets differ from the terrestrial planets is not correct?

jovians rotate significantly more slowly than terrestrials

What is a characteristic of the objects within the asteroid belt?

most objects have densities similar to Mars

What is true about craters?

older surfaces have a much larger number of both big and small craters than newer surfaces

The material that would eventually make all the major bodies in our solar system first gathered together as smaller pieces which astronomers call:

planetesimals

What is true about meteors?

the ages of stony meteorites are as old as some of the oldest objects in the solar system

What happens when two continental plates of different densities collide?

the denser plate slips under the less dense plate, creating mountain ranges

What causes a runaway greenhouse effect?

the surface temperature of a planet with an atmosphere is at least the boiling point of water

What do all four terrestrial planets have in common?

they all have solid surfaces with signs of geological activity on them

Where do geysers on Triton come from?

they are due to the sun warming the surface

What evidence identified that the sites of Mars rover landings were once underwater?

they found rock formations that show the area was under water and also minerals that only form in water