Closed Quiz 1

Question 1

What is a galaxy

Answer 1

Vast collections of stars, gas and, dust

Question 2

What is a light year?

Answer 2

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

Question 3

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

Answer 3

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

Question 4

Approximately how many stars make up our galaxy?

Answer 4

a few hundred billion
100-400 billion

Question 5

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

Answer 5

4.6 billion years old

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

Question 6

what are the six qualities that living things have?

Answer 6

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

Question 7

What is evolution?

Answer 7

Gradual change, development, diversity in population of living organisms

*why earth has such great biodiversity

Question 8

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

Answer 8

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,

Question 9

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

Answer 9

There seems to be only one extreme that can survive?

Question 10

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

Answer 10

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

Question 11

What was the big thing? When did it happen?

Answer 11

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

Question 12

What were the conditions like in the early universe?

Answer 12

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

Question 13

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

Answer 13

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

Question 14

Where do the rest of the chemical elements come from?

Answer 14

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

Question 15

How is the chemical composition of the universe changing overtime

Answer 15

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

Question 16

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

Answer 16

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

Question 17

How much younger is the solar system than the universe?

Answer 17

9.2 billion years younger?

Question 18

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

Answer 18

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)

Question 19

What is technosignature? What is biosignature?

Answer 19

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

Question 20

Why are atmospheres and oceans important for life on earth?

Answer 20

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

Question 21

How is planetary magnetic field produced

Answer 21

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

Question 22

Name two ways a planetary magnetic field helps to protect life

Answer 22

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

Question 23

How can planetary atmosphere be lost to space

Answer 23

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

Question 24

Where did earths initial atmosphere come from?

Answer 24

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.

Question 25

What is Plate tectonics?

Answer 25

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

Question 26

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

Answer 26

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

Question 27

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

Answer 27

Keeps the climate stable?

Question 28

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

Answer 28

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

Question 29

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

Answer 29

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

Question 30

What likely happened to produce the "snowball Earth"?

Answer 30

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

Question 31

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

Answer 31

Thought that the moons gravitational pull stabilizes our tilt, keeping it from varying widely -also helped keep climate stable over long period of time

Question 32

What else does having a large moon do for us?

Answer 32

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

Question 33

How is it thought that the Moon formed?

Answer 33

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

Question 34

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?

Answer 34

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 ^^

Question 35

How did the Solar System form?

Answer 35

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

Question 36

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

Answer 36

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

Question 37

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

Answer 37

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

Question 38

Where did Earth get its water?

Answer 38

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

Question 39

What was Earth like during Hadean time?

Answer 39

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

Question 40

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

Answer 40

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)