new astro boy

31. You are the captain of a tour spaceship and the tourists ask you to take them only to the "largest darn planets" in the solar system. Which of the following planets would you NOT include in your tour?

Mercury

32. The planet with the shortest period of revolution around the Sun is:

Mercury

38. What assumptions are made in Olbers' paradox?

The universe is infinite and uniformly filled with stars.

12. A planet that orbits "on its side" (i.e. has its rotation axis perpendicular to the plane of its orbit) is:

Uranus

30. A planet that orbits "on its side" (i.e. has its rotation axis perpendicular to the plane of its orbit) is:

Uranus

29. Of the following planets which has NO satellites (moons)?

Venus

27. The element that can act like a metal when it is under tremendous pressure and is probably responsible for Jupiter's magnetic field is:

hydrogen

9. In studying the surfaces of many solid bodies in the solar system, astronomers have learned that the number of craters (per unit area):

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

26. Astronomers believe that Mars formed with a much thicker atmosphere than it has today. Where did this atmosphere go?

it escaped into space (and some later froze out as Mars got cold)

17. Which of the following is NOT a correct statement about ways that Jupiter differs from terrestrial planets?

it has many more craters from early collisions

1. In the far future, a visiting tourist from another planetary system asks to see the most massive object in our solar system. Where would you take him/her/it?

the Sun

35. What is an important way in which the Moon and Mercury are both different from Earth?

they do not have an atmosphere

28. The Red Spot of Jupiter is:

variable in size b. a high pressure storm system in the atmosphere c. long-lived (observed since the 1600's) d. all of the above

3. On which of the planets (other than Earth) could a human being step out of a spacecraft and survive without any protective gear (special suit, oxygen tanks, etc)?

you can't fool me; there is no other planet on which we could survive unprotected

The highest mountain in our solar system (called Olympus Mons) is on what planet?

Mars

37. Why is the surface temperature of Venus higher than that of any other planet?

It has an extreme greenhouse effect.

2. Which of the following is NOT a terrestrial planet?

Jupiter

13. The Jovian planet that has the longest year (period of revolution) - and the farthest from the Sun is:

Neptune

14. The element that can act like a metal when it is under tremendous pressure and is probably responsible for Jupiter's magnetism is:

hydrogen

18. By far the most abundant element in the giant (Jovian) planets (the same as in the Sun) is

hydrogen

33. The Moon's escape velocity is smaller than that on Earth because

a. its mass is smaller

11. Radioactive dating techniques have revealed that our Earth and Moon are approximately how old?

about 4.5 billion years

6. Radioactive decay is used to measure the object's

age

5. Planets orbiting other stars are called _____.

b. exoplanets

34. When somebody is talking about the "dark side of the Moon" what they mean is

b. we can not see it from the Earth because the Moon's rotates around its axis with the same period as it rotates around the Earth

36. Earth's interior can be divided up into four zones: the inner core, the outer core, the mantle, and the crust. Which of these zones has the lowest density?

crust

25. The satellites of Mars are likely to

d) Be captured asteroids

20. One way in which the ozone layer is useful for life forms on the Earth's surface is that it

d. absorbs ultra-violet light, preventing much of it from reaching the surface

16. Since Io is the closest moon to Jupiter, it experiences _____.

dramatic tides

7. The average time for an atom to decay is called its _________.

half-life

10. During the process of differentiation

heavier materials sink to the centers of molten planets

15. Which best describes a Jovian planet?

large, gaseous and icy planets with thick atmospheres

21. Lunar rock samples brought back from the Apollo missions support which hypothesis to explain the origin of Earth's Moon?

large-impact hypothesis

24. The atmospheric pressure on Mars is

much smaller than on Earth

4. The most abundant gas in the Earth's atmosphere is

nitrogen

23. The canals that late 19th and early 20th century observers thought they saw on Mars turned out to be:

optical illusions

8. Which of the following is correct: All the planets (without exception)

revolve (orbit) around the Sun in the same direction

19. The region around the Earth where charged particles are trapped and spiral around is called:

the magnetosphere