Astro Finale

Jupiter has enough mass to make 318 Earths. In contrast, Uranus and Neptune have only enough mass to make

15 Earths

We receive a radio message from a civilization around a star about 40 lightyears from Earth? If we reply right away, how long will it be between the time THEY sent the message and the time they receive our reply?

80 years

The same gas makes up most of the atmosphere of Mars and Venus. This gas is:

Carbon dioxide

What does the Fermi Paradox say?

Given all the time since the Big Bang and all the stars, why has some form of intelligent life in the Galaxy not established a network throughout the Galaxy and visited us?

The largest planet in the solar system (by mass) is

Jupiter

Which of the following is NOT a terrestrial planet?

Jupiter

The first radio telescope was built in the 1930's by

Karl Jansky

One reason that some scientists think that there may be life under the ice-crust of Jupiter's moon Europa is that:

Life has been found on Earth, at the bottom of the ocean, deriving its energy not from sun-light but from hot mineral-laden vents coming from deeper inside our planet; something similar could happen at the bottom of the ocean on Europa

The first human being to step out onto the surface of another world was:

Neil Armstrong

The largest volcano on Mars is called:

Olympus Mons (Mt. Olympus)

The person who really publicized the idea of canals on Mars and impressed it on the public mind was:

Percival Lowell

Astronomers have concluded that the Sun's activity varies in an 11-year cycle. Which of the following statements about this cycle is TRUE:

The number of sunspots gets larger and smaller over the course of 11 years

Which of the following statements about the Sun's photosphere is NOT TRUE?

The photosphere is significantly hotter than all the layers of the Sun beneath it (further inward)

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

Uranus

Of the following planets, which do NOT have satellites (moons)?

Venus

Which of the eight planets has a smaller mass than Mercury?

You can't fool me, Mercury has the smallest mass of the eight planets

The largest visible-light telescopes in the world use what device to collect as much light as possible before the light is brought to a focus (to act as the "light bucket")?

a mirror

Which of the following is NOT a detector of radiation from space that astronomers have used?

a refracting telescope

At their centers, all the jovian planets have cores made of:

a solid mixture of rocky and icy materials under great pressure

To break up light into the component colors that it contains, astronomers use a device called:

a spectrometer

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

about 4.5 billion years

To overcome the problems that blur images and don't provide the best resolution from Earth, astronomers have started using flexible mirrors that change shape many times each second. This technique is called:

adaptive optics

We believe the maria on the Earth's Moon are:

ancient impact craters in which lava beds welled up from inside the Moon

The size of the device that collects radiation (such as light) is called a telescope's:

aperture

Why are the largest craters we find on the Moon and Mercury so much larger than the largest craters we find on the Earth?

because the Moon and Mercury do not have atmospheres to protect them from the largest pieces that can hit

Why do astronomers prefer to put infrared telescopes on high-flying airplanes or on satellites in space?

because the water vapor in the lower atmosphere is very good at absorbing infrared

On some parts of Mars, it gets cold enough for a gas to freeze out of the atmosphere that does not freeze out by itself at the temperatures and pressures on Earth. This gas makes up some of the polar caps on Mars and is:

carbon dioxide

Coronal Mass Ejections from the Sun have many serious effects on or near the Earth. Which of the following is NOT one of these effects?

causing huge cyclones around the equator of the Earth

The most important function of an astronomical telescope is to:

collect as much light as possible and bring it to a focus

A new technique called adaptive optics allows astronomers to:

compensate for changes in the Earth's atmosphere and achieve better resolution

Scientists are impressed with extremophiles, life forms that can survive under what seems to humans to be extremely unpleasant conditions. In which of the following environments have we not found life:

conditions resembling the photosphere of the Sun

What is one way that astronomers have actually gotten an idea of the age of the surfaces of terrestrial planets other than the Earth?

counting craters

By far the most abundant element in the giant (jovian) planets is:

hydrogen

If you wanted to find a type of atom in your little finger that has been in its present form (been the same element) since the beginning of the universe, which element should you look for?

hydrogen

The most common element in the Sun is

hydrogen

The large circular coronae on Venus are:

large regions where hot magma rising from the interior of Venus puts pressure on the surface material

Photosynthesis was a great step forward in the evolution of life on Earth, because with photosynthesis

life could extract chemical energy from sunlight

About 75% of the surface of Venus consists of

lowland lava plains

The bluish color that makes the atmosphere of Neptune so beautiful to the human eye is caused by the interaction of sunlight with what gas?

methane

Which band of the electromagnetic spectrum do astronomers suggest is likely to be the best (cheap, little competition from nature, penetrates atmospheres) for communication between civilizations around different stars?

radio waves

All the planets (without exception)

revolve around the Sun in the same direction

What mechanisms do astronomers believe is responsible for making the Sun's outer atmosphere so much hotter than its photosphere?

the Sun's magnetic field interacting with the charged particles that make up the atmosphere

What allowed the Voyager 2 spacecraft to make a "tour" of all four of the jovian planets in the late 1970's and the 1980's?

the four planets were approximately aligned on one side of the Sun and we used the gravity of each planet to speed up the spacecraft to get to the next one in its path

When they talk about the Copernican principle, philosophers and astronomers mean that:

the idea that there is nothing special about our place in the universe

According to the giant impact hypothesis about the formation of the Moon, why did the Earth not break apart into many pieces when the giant impact happened?

the impactor was about the size of Mars or smaller, so it ejected material from the Earth but did not break it

How do astronomers know how strong the magnetic field of the Sun is?

the measure the Zeeman effect (the splitting of spectral lines)

The Drake Equation allows astronomers to estimate

the number of civilizations out among the stars with which we might communicate

The process by which Venus became so much hotter than the Earth is called:

the runaway greenhouse effect

Sunspots are darker than the regions of the Sun around them because

they are cooler than the material around them (although still very hot compared to Earth temperatures)

When astronomers do radar astronomy, they

they bounce a radar beam off the surface of solid objects in our solar system

What new technology has made it possible for astronomers to do "optical SETI" - searching for signals for extra-terrestrial civilization, not in the radio band of the spectrum, but in the visible-light band?

we have developed the ability to make laser pulses that are briefly brighter than the Sun