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Astr210 > Closed Quiz 1 > Flashcards

Closed Quiz 1 Flashcards

1
Q

What is a galaxy

A

Vast collections of stars, gas and, dust

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2
Q

What is a light year?

A

Distance light travels in one year (about 6 trillion miles)

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3
Q

What is the name of our galaxy and how big is it?

A

Milky Way and it’s fairly big (would take 100,000 years to cris our galaxy

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4
Q

Approximately how many stars make up our galaxy?

A

a few hundred billion
100-400 billion

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5
Q

How old is our solar system? How does that age compared to the age of the universe?

A

4.6 billion years old

Solar system is much younger than the universe (13.8 billion years old)

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6
Q

what are the six qualities that living things have?

A

ORDER: molecules not randomly distributed

REPRODUCTION: living organisms make copies of themselves (genetic)

GROWTH: living organisms grows & develop (plants)

ENERGY UTILIZATION: to reproduce, grow, & maintain order (sunlight)

RESPONSE TO ENVIRONMENT: movement due to changes in environmental conditions (sunflowers)

EVOLUTIONARY ADAPTATION: gradual change in population of living organisms

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7
Q

What is evolution?

A

Gradual change, development, diversity in population of living organisms

*why earth has such great biodiversity

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8
Q

What is extremeophile?
What is it about extremeophiles that suggests that life might be widespread in the universe?

A

Living organisms that are adapted to conditions that would kill humans.
- Some can live in environments similar to those found on Mars,
-may be habitable in other planets in the universe,

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9
Q

What is it about life on earth that extremeophiles may not be widespread in the universe

A

There seems to be only one extreme that can survive?

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10
Q

What are the most important chemical elements for life on earth?

A

96% of life is made from four elements; oxygen carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen (all life on earth is based on carbon chemistry)

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11
Q

What was the big thing? When did it happen?

A

Big bang: theory— space, itself expanding, calling galaxies further away from each other. (Discovered by Edwin Hubble).
Happened about 13.8 billion years ago

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12
Q

What were the conditions like in the early universe?

A

In first moments, the universe was extremely hot and dense, but was expanding and cooling

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13
Q

What were the two main chemical elements produced just after the Big Bang?

A

Created hydrogen (~75%) and helium (~25%)

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14
Q

Where do the rest of the chemical elements come from?

A

When the universe was a few million years old clouds of hydrogen and helium gas could collapse to form the first stars

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15
Q

How is the chemical composition of the universe changing overtime

A

In today’s universe, when a star forms, a plantation system forms with it—heavy elements

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16
Q

Why would there have likely been no life in the universe even after it was a few hundred million years old

A

Without other elements, besides hydrogen and helium, it would have been difficult for life to begin

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17
Q

How much younger is the solar system than the universe?

A

9.2 billion years younger?

18
Q

What did the Galileo spacecraft reveal about life on earth? Why would these observations important?

A

On its way to Jupiter, it flew past a planet and made some observations and found… water and atmosphere with both oxygen and methane (features of earth that may be suited for life)

19
Q

What is technosignature? What is biosignature?

A

Technosignature: modulated narrow band, pulsed radio (evidence of technology)
Biosignature: life on earth (evidence of life)

20
Q

Why are atmospheres and oceans important for life on earth?

A

ATMOSPHERES: helps us breath, regulate temperature, protects us from UV solar radiation

OCEANS: all life needs water, water makes up 60% of us, water is the medium that chemistry happens

21
Q

How is planetary magnetic field produced

A

Formed in the interior of the Earth, and extends out around the Earth
PRODUCED BECAUSE: Earths interior has an electrically conductive liquid (molten metal) that is mixing due to convección

22
Q

Name two ways a planetary magnetic field helps to protect life

A

Protect us from harmful solar radiation and helps attain a planets atmosphere from being lost to space

23
Q

How can planetary atmosphere be lost to space

A

Can be a loss to thermal escape: happens when gas and molly molecules are hot enough to reach escape velocity)

24
Q

Where did earths initial atmosphere come from?

A

Gases were released from the Earth itself as it cooled and the atmosphere was derived from dust particles from the original gas cloud around the planet.

25
Q

What is Plate tectonics?

A

Earths outer crust is made of solid, rigid plates of rock that float on the upper mantle which is solid but solid that can flow

26
Q

What is the greenhouse effect? What are the major greenhouse gases? How much warming do they give us.

A

Sunlight passes through glass of a greenhouse, warming inside—heat is radiated back as infrared light (glass is opaque to IR, heat is trapped inside

gasses: water vapor, CO2 (carbon dioxide) , CH4 (methane)

warming: current temp = 59 F
without warming temp = would be 3 F

27
Q

What is the connection between the amount of
CO2 in the atmosphere and average global

A

Keeps the climate stable?

28
Q

How do volcanoes and plate tectonics help to regulate Earth’s climate?

A

Volcanoes emit CO2 and other green house gasses (increase in volcanic activity can warm the planet by adding more CO2)

29
Q

What specifically would need to happen for volcanic eruptions to heat our climate? And to cool it?

A

at higher temperatures— more of operation, more clouds (which reflect sunlight back to space) and more CO2 dissolve into oceans

  • that ultimately lowers the amount of CO2, which leads to cooling
30
Q

What likely happened to produce the “snowball
Earth”?

A

Too much cooling (from low amounts of co2) more snow and ice created which reflected more sunlight, cooling the earth—earth might have become frozen

31
Q

What role does having a large moon (maybe play in keeping Earth’s climate stable?

A

Thought that the moons gravitational pull stabilizes our tilt, keeping it from varying widely

-also helped keep climate stable over long period of time

32
Q

What else does having a large moon do for us?

A

Moon is also responsible for most of our tides which helped transition life from ocean to land

33
Q

How is it thought that the Moon formed?

A

A Mars sized world collided with earth about 4.5 billion years ago.

-ejects thrown into space forming the moon
-happened before earth had life

34
Q

From our list of features Earth has, (atmosphere, oceans magnetic field, etc.), why do worlds that are smaller than Earth have trouble holding on to these things? What do they lose and why?

A

They have less internal heat which…
- makes them cool off faster
-kills thier magnetic fields & plate tectonics
-less likely to retain atmosphere & oceans
-less likely to have life bc of ^^

35
Q

How did the Solar System form?

A

formed from a vast collapsing rotating disk shaped nebula that was mostly composed of hydrogen and helium gas

36
Q

What is a planetesimal? How did they grow into planets?

A

Theorized as the building blocks of planets (sun formed in the middle &solid materials condensed around it

growth: solar nebula was hot close to the sun and cooler further away

37
Q

How are our Solar System’s inner planets different from the outer ones? Why are they so different?

A

inner planets have different compositions than the outer planets

INNER: essentially made of rock & Iron (Fe), with some gasses trapped in their interior

OUTER: composed, mostly of hydrogen and helium, while their moons are largely frozen H2O & other ices

38
Q

Where did Earth get its water?

A

From oceans (when earth cooled; icy asteroids &comets?)

39
Q

What was Earth like during Hadean time?

A

Unstable, molten surface, volcanoes and many asteroid impacts (hellish)

40
Q

What was the Late Heavy Bombardment? What may have caused it?

A

During that time formation of crust & oceans on earth formed but earth was still being bombarded by debris left over from the solar system

CAUSE: believed to be caused by giant planets moving around, orbiting close to and farther from the sun (which may have pushed solar system objects and asteroids along)

Astr210 (4 decks)

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