Explorations of the Universe Quizzes

Steven Dutch, Professor Emeritus, Natural and Applied Sciences, Universityof Wisconsin - Green Bay


May 4, 2000. This is the final version. All Final Exam Questions will betaken from this question bank.

Wording of some questions may be modified, some answers omitted, etc. onthe final. Also, there may be some duplicate questions in this question bank.

Shores of the Cosmic Ocean

About how old is the Universe?

On the Cosmic Calendar (Age of the Universe compressed into a year) aboutwhen did the Earth form?

On the Cosmic Calendar (Age of the Universe compressed into a year) aboutwhen did the dinosaurs die out?

On the Cosmic Calendar (Age of the Universe compressed into a year) wheredoes human history plot?

What did Eratosthenes Do?

What does a light year measure?

Sagan uses this ancient institution as a symbol throughout Cosmos:

Arrange in order of size (smallest to largest)

Ancient Greek astronomer who first proposed that the Earth goes around the Sun

Harmony of the Worlds

In the partnership between Kepler and Tycho, what did Kepler contribute?

In the partnership between Kepler and Tycho, what did Tycho contribute?

What crime was Kepler’s mother charged with?

According to Kepler’s First Law, a planet’s orbit is -------with the sun ---------

According to Kepler’s Second Law, a line between the planet and thesun:

Kepler’s Third Law relates what two quantities:

The drive to improve planetary predictions in the Renaissance was impelled by the needto fix the date of:

He’s most famous for inventing the telescope and proposing that the Earth goesaround the Sun, but he didn’t originate either one:

Kepler originally believed the spacing of the planetary orbits was dictated by:

Match the people and their attributes

  • Kepler
  • Galileo
  • Copernicus
  • Tycho
  • Newton
  • Developed theory of gravity
  • Popularizer of science
  • First proposed Earth circles the sun
  • Invented calculus
  • Playboy with a gold nose
  • Spent part of his life as a refugee
  • Polish cleric
  • Problems with the Inquisition
  • Had the best observational data

Early voyages around the world were primarily for:

A major scientific work was inspired when this instrument failed to workas expected:

Matching

  • Your distance north or south on earth
  • Requires accurate timekeeping to measure
  • Measuring it was a very powerful stimulus to science and technology
  • Can be determined easily from astronomical sightings
  • Latitude
  • Longitude

The British survey of this country was one of the 19th century’slargest scientific projects:

That survey was motivated mostly by:

In the 1700’s and 1800’s, Britain and France engaged in ascientific rivalry that revolved around:

The great 19th-century British survey did all of these except:

Compasses don’t always point due north because:

Why finding the exact shape of the earth was such a keen scientific rivalry in the1700's

The Great Trigonometrical Survey led to the discovery of Mount Everest but it was also:

Spaceflight I

Known as the Chief Designer, his existence was kept strictly secret by the SovietUnion:

Probably the most successful test aircraft ever built:

The first cruise missile:

The first true ballistic missile to leave the Earth's atmosphere:

All but one of the following are reasons why the Soviet Union led in rocket boostersfor several years early in the Space Age. Pick the one that is not.

Which is true of rockets and jets?

When a rocket takes off, most of its mass is:

Matching

  • The top-secret "Chief Designer"
  • Started rocketry in Germany
  • First liquid-fuel rocket
  • Worked for U.S. after World War II
  • A Russian who worked out most theoretical problems of space flight
  • Robert Goddard
  • Hermann Oberth
  • Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
  • Sergei Korolev
  • Werner von Braun

How does a rocket differ from a jet?

What role did German scientists play in the Soviet space program?

Why did the Russians lead in lift capability at first?

Spaceflight II-III

The first U.S. manned space program:

How much time in space did America have when Kennedy committed us to amoon landing?

Which was an American space first?

Matching

  • Oldest man in space
  • First human in space
  • First American in orbit
  • First man on the Moon
  • First American in space
  • Died in a launch pad accident
  • Had his capsule sink on landing
  • John Glenn
  • Yuri Gagarin
  • Gherman Titov
  • Neil Armstrong
  • Alan Shepard
  • Gus Grissom
  • Valentina Tereshkova

List the programs in chronological order:

What killed three American astronauts in 1967?

In Russian, "sputnik" means:

Ranger and Surveyor were:

This U.S. president was in office when the first satellites were launched and tried tocalm public fears of a "missile gap" with the Soviet Union:

The only U.S. president to hold office when humans landed on the Moon:

This U.S. president challenged the Soviet Union to a race to the Moon:

The basic theoretical problems of space travel were first identified and solved by:

Which spacecraft carried only a single crew member?

The first person to set foot on the Moon:

The only manned program ever to go beyond Earth orbit

Lyndon Johnson was a staunch supporter of the space program but also caused it a greatdeal of harm through:

Heaven and Hell

The role of impact in Solar System history:

The greenhouse effect on Venus is due to:

The principal clue that the surface of a planet is geologically young

The 1908 Tunguska Event is now (2000) believed to have been caused bywhat?

When a meteor hits, the resulting crater is ______ the size of the meteor:

The energy of a moving body is related to its:

Comets are mostly made of:

Comets’ Orbits:

Venus’ atmosphere is mostly:

Who landed the first (and only) spacecraft on Venus to send back pictures?

Why is Venus So Hot?

What is mostly responsible for Earth’s Greenhouse Effect?

What are Venus’ clouds made of?

In what respect is Venus most similar to Earth?

Comets exhibit a tail because:

The favored theory for the formation of the Moon is:

Blues for the Red Planet

The "canals" on Mars are now regarded as:

Mars is earthlike in many ways. In which ways is Mars earthlike and in which ways not?

Just for Fun: What do Tarzan and Mars have in common?

This biologist was a harsh and accurate critic of the idea of canals on Mars:

Which are (and are not) examples of liquid water on Mars?

Mars' atmosphere is mostly:

His novel, War of the Worlds, was the first to depict truly alienextraterrestrials:

Believed that Mars was covered by a network of intelligently-designed canals

The results of the Viking search for life are generally interpreted as due to:

Travelers' Tales

 

This moon of Jupiter is the largest satellite in the Solar System:

This chemical element is believed to power the volcanoes on one of Jupiter’s moonsand also account for its strange surface colors:

Jupiter is about ___ times as large in diameter as the Earth, but the Sun is as manytimes bigger than Jupiter:

Sagan argues for the benefits of open-mindedness and exploration by describing thissociety:

Two important instruments invented in this society were:

Perhaps the leading scientist of this culture was:

Which were and were not discoveries by this scientist?

Matching

  • Io
  • Europa
  • Ganymede
  • Callisto
  • Titan
  • Thin icy crust, possible subsurface ocean
  • Dark, cratered, with a huge impact basin
  • Not a moon of Jupiter
  • Volcanoes and a sulfur covered surface
  • Thick brownish atmosphere
  • Largest moon in the solar system
  • Not discovered by Galileo

The volcanism on one of Jupiter's moons is powered by

Voyager and the Outer Solar System

How do Uranus and Neptune compare to Earth in diameter?

Which planet has not yet been visited by a spacecraft?

Planetary Rings must be:

The sharp edges of rings are maintained by

Lives of the Stars

The color of a star is due to:

All objects exist as the result of a balance between some force and:

Matching: what force keeps each object from collapsing?

  • Planets
  • Normal Stars
  • White Dwarf
  • Neutron Star
  • Black Hole
  • Radiation
  • Gravity
  • Nuclear Forces
  • Electron repulsion
  • Forces between atoms
  • No known force can prevent collapse

Match the object and its approximate size:

  • Planets
  • Normal Stars
  • Giant Stars
  • White Dwarf
  • Neutron Star
  • Black Hole
  • No size at all
  • 10 km
  • 10,000 km
  • 1,000,000 km
  • 100,000,000 km

Parallax is:

To multiply two numbers in scientific notation, _____ their exponents

To divide one number by another in scientific notation, _____ the lower exponent

Anything to the first power is:

Anything to the zero power is:

What determines the identity of each particular chemical element?

What two elements make up 99.9% of the cosmos?

Where did the heavy elements in the Solar System come from?

The spacecraft HIPPARCOS provided us with:

To determine distances in the Solar System, we used observations of which bodies?

To determine distances in the Solar System, we must:

The violent collapse and explosion of a star is termed a:

The heavier (more complex) an element is, the __________

Great spiral mass of stars about 100,000 light years across

Technique astronomers use to find distance to nearby stars

Deneb, 1600 light years away, is too far even for HIPPARCOS to measure its distanceaccurately. We estimate its distance by:

Galaxies and the Universe

How Big is our Galaxy?

Where are we in our Galaxy?

We know our location in our Galaxy by observing what?

Our galaxy is in the center of:

How is our Sun moving in the galaxy?

The evidence that galaxies are receding from us is:

The energy released at the Big Bang is now observed as:

To get an object moving at the speed of light would require:

This great astronomical discovery was made by a woman astronomer:

In the evenings in _______ we look toward the center of the galaxy

Where is the Solar System in relation to the center of the Milky Way?

These stars give us a distance scale to the galaxies:

Why aren’t astronomers very worried about the "missing mass" in theuniverse?

The "missing mass" in the universe is more accurately described as:

One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue

Matching

  • Linneaus
  • Lamarck
  • Darwin
  • Wallace
  • Mendel
  • He gave us the biological classification system still in use today:
  • Inspired by a four year voyage on HMS Beagle
  • Discovered genes but his discovery went largely unnoticed for a long time
  • Was an obscure scientist until he co-discovered evolution
  • He believed organisms are changed by their environment
  • His real job was social peer and gentleman companion to the ship's captain
  • He first included humans among the primates

What does the term "random" mean in scientific contexts?

Molecule that carries genetic information in most organisms

Why was John Scopes put on trial for teaching evolution?

What happened to him?

The term "fundamentalist" was devised to describe:

What's a "fugue?"

The Geologic Column, the standard names and orders of geologic periods, was establishedin its modern form:

One opponent of evolution reverted to Lamarck's ideas and used his politicalconnections to persecute his opponents. This happened in:

Encyclopedia Galactica

Sagan uses the translation of this as a model for how we might someday communicate withextraterrestrial civilizations:

The fact that bureacracies tend to use predictable formats for documents aided indecipheing this ancient writing:

The man who did much to destroy these writings also left clues that aided in theirdecipherment:

This writing was almost easy to decode because it included a translation in Greek:

Inscribed stone that led to the decipherment of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics

"Hostile alien" science-fiction films went out of fashion for a time at aboutthe same time as this TV program type, and for many of the same reasons:

This science-fiction film explored the notion that aliens might be so advanced as to beincomprehensible, and also pioneered the use of ultra-realistic special effects:

A radical departure from previous science fiction in that it depicted enlightenedhumans interacting as equals with alien races:

A "Close Encounter of the First Kind" involves what?

A "Close Encounter of the Second Kind" involves what?

A "Close Encounter of the Third Kind" involves what?

The Drake Equation estimates what?

Which are and are not terms in the Drake Equation?

Which is the first term in the Drake Equation we can't estimate with at least someconfidence?

Other Questions

First known person to speculate that the Earth revolves around the Sun:

This measure of geographic position can be determined by watching the heavens appear torotate:

Matching

  • Normal Star
  • White Dwarf
  • Neutron Star
  • Black Hole
  • Red Giant
  • Gravity overwhelms all other forces
  • Largest of all stars
  • Can be a pulsar
  • What the most massive stars become
  • What the sun will probably become next
  • Nuclear fusion is the source of its energy
  • The final stage in the evolution of the Sun

 

  • Heliocentric Theory of Solar System
  • Deduced size of Earth
  • Theory of Epicycles and Deferents
  • Gold nose and wild lifestyle
  • Pious and brilliant theoretician
  • Kepler is best identified with:
  • Eratosthenes is best identified with:
  • Tycho is best identified with:
  • Ptolemy is best identified with:
  • Copernicus is best identified with:

 

  • Jean Champollion
  • Robert Goddard
  • Percival Lowell
  • Sir George Everest
  • Christian Huyghens
  • Lived in 17th-century Holland
  • Invented many clocks and other instruments
  • Discoverer of Titan
  • Developed the liquid-fuel rocket
  • "Saw canals" on Mars
  • Directed the Great Survey of India
  • Deciphered Egyptian writings
  • Directed the project that discovered the world's highest peak
  • Deduced the nature of Saturn's rings
  • Was encouraged as a boy by a famous physicist

 

  • Venus
  • Mars
  • Jupiter
  • Saturn
  • Mercury
  • Nearest planet with surface visible from Earth
  • Has a Giant Red Spot
  • Has four giant moons
  • Has a runaway greenhouse effect
  • Has enormous volcanos and rift valleys
  • Once had liquid water
  • Has two tiny, irregular moons
  • Has a moon with an atmosphere
  • Has clouds of sulfuric acid droplets
  • Closest to the sun and smallest of the group listed
  • Has polar ice caps that expand and contact with its seasons
  • The Cassini probe is on its way here
  • Visited by Viking
  • The Galileo mission studied this planet

This relatively unknown scientist discovered evolution at about the same time asDarwin:

A moon of Jupiter that has active volcanoes

This country was one of the most open societies in the 1600's


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Created 31 March 2000, Last Update 1 May 2000