Chapter 14 astrology

1. The typical meteor is

a. about the size of a small one-family house

b. made of evaporated ices

c. a small solid particle, no bigger than a pea

d. visible only from above the Earth's atmosphere

e. the result of magnetic activity in the upper atmosphere of the Earth

c. a small solid particle, no bigger than a pea

2. Astronomers estimate that about 25 million meteors strike the Earth's atmosphere each day. How come we haven't run out of meteors in the long history of the Earth?

b. meteors are pieces of dirt left over from the formation of our solar system

3. When a chunk of cosmic material the size of a golf ball or a baseball hits the Earth's atmosphere it makes a

a. meteor shower

b. radiant

c. fireball

d. meteorite which breaks into pieces when hitting the ground

e. trail so faint, there is no chance of our seeing it on the ground

c. fireball

4. Chunks of solid material that survive passing through the Earth's atmosphere and are found on the Earth's surface are called

a. meteorites

b. asteroids

c. meteors

d. meteor showers

e. comets

a. meteorites

5. A student in your class whom you kind-of like asks you come to watch a meteor shower. What exactly are you being invited to?

d. watching the left-over dirt from a comet burn up by friction as the pieces hit the Earth's atmosphere

6. When a periodic comet leaves its dusty debris behind in its orbit, the Earth can intercept this debris and

a. show new impact craters

b. have a meteor shower as the dust burns up

c. lose ozone from its atmosphere

d. speed up the orbit of the Moon

e. have an increase in garbage bills from Alaska to New Zealand

b. have a meteor shower as the dust burns up

7. If everything in the solar system is moving around, why do the Perseid meteors repeat regularly around August 11th or so?

a. Because the Earth does not move relative to the meteor particles

b. Because the Earth in its orbit intersects the same swarm of meteor particles at the same time each year

c. Because the Perseids are not in space at all, but in the upper layers of the Earth's atmosphere

d. Because August 11th is when the Sun's rays are the warmest, and thus tend to move the meteor particles toward us at the fastest speed

e. Only astrologers can explain this regularity; astronomers do not understand it

b. Because the Earth in its orbit intersects the same swarm of meteor particles at the same time each year

8. Some years some meteor showers, such as the Leonids, feature many more meteors than at other times. What is the cause of these "meteor storms"?

a. the dust freed from some comets is clumpy and not evenly distributed along its orbit

b. how many meteors we see in a given year depends one which side of the Sun we are on

c. we get meteor storms at the same time and for the same reason we have more hurricanes on Earth

d. meteor storms happen when Halley's Comet is near the Earth in its 76-year orbit

e. no one has any idea about why meteor storms happen; they are a mystery

a. the dust freed from some comets is clumpy and not evenly distributed along its orbit

9. One way to find a new meteorite is to:

a. patrol the block on which you live carefully each night for a few years

b. look for a bright comet in the sky and look where its tail is pointing

c. search the area beneath or close to the point where a bright fireball was seen to burn out

d. look near the Earth's equator where our planet's magnetic attraction is the greatest

e. taste the meatloaf in the college cafeteria late in the week

c. search the area beneath or close to the point where a bright fireball was seen to burn out

10. One region on Earth that has become a rich source of new meteorites in recent decades (including the meteorite from Mars that got famous because some scientists claimed they had found evidence for the building blocks of life on Mars) is:

a. the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico

b. Bayonne, New Jersey

c. the Great Salt Lake

d. Australia

e. the Antarctic

e. the Antarctic

11. The ages of stony meteorites have been measured to be roughly equal to:

a. the time since the last Ice Age on Earth

b. the oldest ages we have measured for any bodies in the solar system

c. the time since the great impact that killed the dinosaurs

d. the time that has passed since the death of Julius Ceasar

e. you can't fool me, we have no way of measuring the ages of stony meteorites

b. the oldest ages we have measured for any bodies in the solar system

12. How can astronomers measure the age of a meteorite that fell from the skies?

c. They measure the amount still left of radioactive materials in the meteorite, and how much has turned into decay products

13. The Murchison meteorite that was found in Australia in 1969 is important to scientists because it contained

a. organic materials, such as amino acids

b. more metal than any other meteorite

c. large flecks of gold

d. radioactive elements which we do not have on the Earth

e. the decomposed bodies of small yellow aliens who were clearly intelligent

a. organic materials, such as amino acids

14. Which of the following is not a characteristic that worlds in our solar system have in common:

a. that the planets all revolve around the Sun in the same direction

b. that most of the planets spin in the same direction that they revolve

c. that many of the larger moons go around their planets in the same direction

d. that the planets' orbits lie in roughly the same plane

e. that all the planets have solid surfaces on which we can see impact craters

e. that all the planets have solid surfaces on which we can see impact craters

15. Which of the following pieces of observational evidence does our modern "solar nebula" theory of the formation of the solar system NOT explain directly?

a. the fact that all the planets revolve around the equator of the Sun in the same direction

b. the difference in the composition of the terrestrial and jovian planets

c. the ages of the oldest rocks on Earth, the Moon, and meteorites

d. the plane of the orbit of Pluto

e. the existence of comets in the outer solar system made mainly of frozen gases

d. the plane of the orbit of Pluto

16. When the solar system was forming, the building blocks from which the protoplanets gathered together were the:

a. gold, iron, and nickel atoms

b. planetesimals (a few km to tens of km wide)

c. giant accretion grains about the size of Mars

d. extremely hot clouds of gas torn out of the Sun, which was already shining brilliantly

e. pure water ice crystals, about the size of a snowflake

b. planetesimals (a few km to tens of km wide)

17. How do astronomers know that the age of the solar system is about 4.5 billion years old?

a. radioactive dating of all the rocks on Earth shows that age

b. they estimate that age from the number of comets that are still located in the Kuiper Belt

c. radioactive dating of the primitive meteorites indicates they have that age (since they are left-over building blocks of the solar system)

d. they estimate the date from the number of impact craters on the Earth

e. they have the warranty book for each planet, and it tells you when the unit was manufactured

c. radioactive dating of the primitive meteorites indicates they have that age (since they are left-over building blocks of the solar system)

18. Among solid worlds, which type of world is most likely to have significant geological activity?

a. those that are the smallest (and thus easiest to heat)

b. those that have strong magnetic fields

c. those that have a moon (satellite)

d. those that are the largest (and retain heat the best)

e. those that are farthest from the Sun

d. those that are the largest (and retain heat the best)

19. The reason that worlds like the Earth are differentiated is that

c. the continuing impacts on a growing protoplanet eventually melted the entire body

20. Astronomers call the vast, rotating cloud of vapor and dust from which the solar system formed:

a. the Oort Cloud

b. the Kuiper Belt

c. the proto-Sun

d. the solar nebula

e. Bayonne, New Jersey

d. the solar nebula

21. Astronomers now believe that the differences in composition among the planets reflect what characteristic in the early solar system

a. orbital speed

b. temperature

c. whether or not a planet had rings

d. the age of the material

e. none of the above

b. temperature

22. A key difference between the protoplanets that formed in the outer solar system and those that formed in the inner solar system was that

a. those in the inner solar system were much larger than those in the outer solar system

b. those in the outer solar system included far more metal and rock, and thus the outer planets could be denser

c. those in the outer solar system were in a place where ice, not just rock, condensed and thus could grow larger

d. those in the outer solar system did not have enough planetesimals nearby

e. you can't fool me, there were no differences between the inner and outer protoplanets; only the planets that finally formed are different.

c. those in the outer solar system were in a place where ice, not just rock, condensed and thus could grow larger

23. One of the best proofs that our theory of how the solar system formed is correct is that astronomers now observe

a. Pluto's orbit, which is not in the plane (or disk) that the other planets orbit in

b. disks around other stars which show evidence of gaps where planets may be forming

c. planets that are called "hot Jupiters"

d. no water in the inner solar system

e. UFO's with alien astronomy textbooks inside, discussing the same theories

b. disks around other stars which show evidence of gaps where planets may be forming

24. The first technique that allowed astronomers to find exoplanets involved:

a. photographing the planets using infrared waves

b. looking for the decrease of light from the star during a transit of the planet across its disk

c. sending a very small spacecraft to the exoplanet to take close-up images

d. measuring changes in the radial velocity (Doppler shift) of the star caused by the pull of orbiting planets

e. simply taking a visible light photo of the planet around the nearest star; it wasn't that hard

d. measuring changes in the radial velocity (Doppler shift) of the star caused by the pull of orbiting planets

25. The telescope in space that allowed astronomers to find thousands of exoplanets and exoplanet candidates by making very careful measurements during a planet transit was called:

a. Kepler

b. Voyager

c. Transitor

d. New Horizons

e. InSight

a. Kepler

26. A type of planet that our surveys of exoplanets are revealing around other stars, but we don't have any examples of around the Sun are:

a. terrestrial planets

b. jovian (giant) planets

c. Super-Earth's

d. dwarf planets

e. you can't fool me, we have examples in the solar system of all the types of planets our exoplanet surveys are revealing

c. Super-Earth's

27. What is our best idea currently about how such "hot Jupiters" came to be?

a. each hot Jupiter came directly out of the star it now orbits and must be made of the exact same material at only slightly lower temperatures

b. hot Jupiters formed by the collision and merger of many terrestrial planets - these collisions heated them up

c. hot Jupiters formed in an asteroid belt and are made of countless asteroids that are hot

d. hot Jupiters formed further out in their star system, and then migrated inward somehow

e. hot Jupiters are artificial; they were made by super-advanced alien beings to make the universe more interesting

d. hot Jupiters formed further out in their star system, and then migrated inward somehow

28. At the beginning of the solar system's history, a ready supply of proto-planets or mini-planets crashed into the developing planets and each other - something astronomers call the "era of giant impacts." How long do astronomers estimate this era lasted?

a. only a few dozen years - it was over very quickly

b. about 100 million years (0.1 billion)

c. about two billion years

d. about four billion years (it only ended about half a billion years ago)

e. that era is not finished yet - giant impacts are still happening all over the solar system

b. about 100 million years (0.1 billion)

29. For solid rocky worlds, a general rule is

a. the larger the world, the closer it is to the Sun

b. the smaller the world, the more likely it is to have an atmosphere

c. the larger the world, the slower it cools off and the more it will keep its internal heat

d. the smaller the world, the more likely it is to have a moon or moons

e. the shorter a world's year (time to orbit the Sun), the more likely it is to harbor life

c. the larger the world, the slower it cools off and the more it will keep its internal heat

30. Which of these worlds is the most active geologically?

a. Venus

b. Mars

c. Mercury

d. the Moon

e. all of the above are equally active these days

a. Venus

31. The tallest mountain on a terrestrial world is:

a. Mt. Everest on Earth

b. Mt. Maxwell on Venus

c. the ring of mountains surrounding Copernicus crater on the Moon

d. the ice mountains on Titan

e. Olympus Mons (Mt. Olympus) on Mars

e. Olympus Mons (Mt. Olympus) on Mars

32. The reason that Olympus Mons, the tallest mountain on Mars, is taller than Mount Everest (the tallest mountain on Earth) is that:

a. the gravity on Mars is less, so a larger mass can support itself against its own weight

b. Mars has a much larger molten core than the Earth

c. there are no continental plates that move sideways on Mars, while there are such sliding motions on Earth

d. the Earth's Moon has a much stronger pull than the moons of Mars

e. more than one of the above

e. more than one of the above

33. The atmosphere of Venus is mostly carbon dioxide, and the atmosphere of the Earth has water vapor. Why are these two gases absent in the atmosphere of the satellite around Saturn called Titan?

d. Titan is so cold that carbon dioxide and water vapor freeze out