At Least Know This: Essential Science to Enhance Your Life

Question 1

What species is a eukaryote, vertebrate, mammal, big-brained, bipedal, omnivorious, microbe-hosting, destructive, spacefaring organism?

Answer 1

You - A human

Question 2

EVERY organism stores and shares genetic information in ____ and ____.

Answer 2

DNA, RNA

Question 3

EVERY life form relies on _________ to give its cells structure and help accomodate basic functions.

Answer 3

liquid water

Question 4

_____, ____, and ____ are the most common elements within all Earth life.

Answer 4

Carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen

Question 5

Contrary to what our eyes and common sense may tell us, a human body is mostly ____ ____ - because atoms are mostly ___ ___.

Answer 5

empty space

Question 6

In order of abundance (number of atoms), ___ is the most common element in the universe and in the human body.

Answer 6

hydrogen

Question 7

In order of mass, ___ is the most common element in the human body followed by ___, then ____.

Answer 7

oxygen, carbon, hydrogen

Question 8

Hydrogen atoms formed during the Big Bang; all others were forged inside of ____ and then dispersed throughout the universe when those ___ died and exploded in what’s called a supernova event.

Answer 8

stars, stars

Question 9

Why are we made of so many hydrogen atoms?

Answer 9

because over half our body is water - one water molecule is made of two hydrogen atoms chemically bonded to one oxygen atom

Question 10

___ are the fundamental unit of life.

Answer 10

Cells

Question 11

Some life forms do very well with just one cell. Examples include___, ____, and ____.

Answer 11

archaea, bacteria, and protozoa

Question 12

A recent study estimates 30 trillion cells in an average human body, about ___ are ___ ___ ___.

Answer 12

80%, red blood cells

Question 13

A human body is 99% hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen atoms. More than half of these are ___, the most abundant element in the universe.

Answer 13

hydrogen

Question 14

The human body is a diverse and unique habitat for trillions (about 5 lbs worth) of ____, most of which are unknown to science.

Answer 14

microbes (other organisms)

Question 15

A human body is supported by a bone framework. At birth, a human infant has about ____ bones; many of them later fuse together reducing the total number to ___ in adulthood.

Answer 15

300, 206

Question 16

The human body is bloody. About ___ percent (1.2-1.5 gallons) of an average person’s weight is blood.

Answer 16

7%

Question 17

The human body is muscular. There are about ___ named muscles in a human body. There is no agreed upon exact figure, because some muscles are combinations of smaller muscles and can be interpreted differently.

Answer 17

700

Question 18

The human body is hairy. People are covered by hair. The few hairless areas include ___, ____, and ____.

Answer 18

lips, palms, soles of the feet

Question 19

Humans are classified in what “domain” of living organisms?

Answer 19

Eukaryota (made of cells with nuclei - like fungi, tubeworms, redwood trees and whales)

Question 20

Humans are classified in what “phylum” of living organisms?

Answer 20

Vertebrata (you and all other animals with a backbone)

Question 21

Humans are classified in what “class” of living organisms?

Answer 21

Mammalia (you and all other endothermic animals with spine, hair, and mammary glands)

Question 22

Humans are classified in what “order” of living organisms?

Answer 22

Primates (lemurs, monkeys, apes, etc.)

Question 23

Humans are classified in what “genus” of living organisms?

Answer 23

Homo (this includes all forms of humans both alive and extinct)

Question 24

Humans are classified in what “species” of living organisms?

Answer 24

sapiens (modern humans)

Question 25

Where do humans fit in with all other life on Earth?

Answer 25

Carl Linnaeus (a Swedish scientist) came up with a helpful way of sorting all life based on similarities and relatedness (called taxonomy). Its like Russian nesting dolls, with “kingdom” being the largest group followed by “phylum”, “class”, “order”, “family”, “genus”, “species”.

Question 26

Give the categories of taxonomy from most broad to most specific:

Answer 26

kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species

Question 27

The ___ or ___ name is the basic naming system for identifying unique life-forms: first comes the larger genus (first letter capitalized, all letters italicized), followed by the smaller species (first letter lowercase, all letters italicized). Example: Homo sapiens

Answer 27

scientific, Latin

Question 28

The genetic revolution has given scientists a vast resource of detailed information and it (does or doesn’t) always align well with classical taxonomy.

Answer 28

doesn’t

Question 29

Coral reef ecosystems shelter about a ____ of all marine life. All 29 of the globally significant corals reefs are likely to be dead by the end of this ___.

Answer 29

30%, century

Question 30

The most comprehensive study ever done on the total volume of Earth life concluded that there are likely ___ species alive right now, and only about ___ percent of them have been identified.

Answer 30

1 trillion, one-thousandth of one percent (0.001 percent)

Question 31

About ___ percent of all species that have ever lived have gone extinct.

Answer 31

99%

Question 32

What is life? How do you know if something is living?

Answer 32

There is no universal agreement on the definition of life, and there may never be, given the vague-to-nonexistant boundaries between the living and the nonliving.

Question 33

The ___ ___ is estimated to contain one of every ten currently known species on Earth. ___ ___ are rapidly destorying it.

Answer 33

Amazon rainforest, Human activities

Question 34

About ___ percent of plants and trees share a critical symbiotic relationship with fungi. Vast and intricate mycelium networks lay beneath virtually every forest.

Answer 34

90%

Question 35

About ___ percent of the world’s large carnivores and herbivores are currently threatened with extinction. Iconic animals such as rhinos and giraffes, for example, may be erased from the wild in this century, primarily due to ___ and ___.

Answer 35

60%t, habitat loss and poaching

Question 36

All known life on Earth today is fundamentally similar, is genetically related, and shares descent from a single-celled common ___ that lived at least ___ or ___ billion years ago.

Answer 36

ancestor, 3 or 4

Question 37

The question of ___, or how life began, is one of the great challenges in science.

Answer 37

abiogensis

Question 38

NASA has a deep interest in ____ ____ because astrobiologist are looking for it beyond Earth.

Answer 38

defining life

Question 39

NASA’s current working definition of life is short and to the point: “__________”

Answer 39

Life is a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution.

Question 40

____ meet almost no one’s definition of life because they can’t reproduce alone or with other ____. If one day we were to agree that ___ qualify as life, they would instantly be the most abundant life form in the ocean.

Answer 40

Viruses, viruses, viruses

Question 41

___ evolved over for billions of years as a consequence of close and constant interactions with plant and animal life, humans included.

Answer 41

Viruses

Question 42

Ocean viruses kill about ___ of all marine bacteria every 24 hours. Overall, viruses kill about ___ percent of all ocean life every day.

Answer 42

half, 20%

Question 43

Most ___ are much smaller than bacteria, so the weight almost nothing. But they compensate in numbers. All ocean ____ together weigh more than 75 million blue whales combined.

Answer 43

viruses, viruses

Question 44

The human genome is about ___ percent viral genes.

Answer 44

5-8%

Question 45

Viruses may not be capable of fully independent ___ and ___, they do manage to evolve and have a big say in the evolution of everything else.

Answer 45

reproduction and evolution

Question 46

How old is life on Earth?

Answer 46

The current record holder for the oldest evidence of life are fossils found in Canada that date back 3.95 billion years ago.

Question 47

What blew up during the Cambrian Explosion?

Answer 47

So many animals showed up. The Cambrian Explosion is the point in geological when complex organisms appeared.

Question 48

___ are the most iconic of the early marine animals that lived during the Cambrian explosion.

Answer 48

Trilobites

Question 49

One possible definition of life: sometimes certain kinds of ___ (nonlife) join to become certain kinds of ___ (still not life) that join together to become a ___ (life).

Answer 49

atoms, molecules, cell

Question 50

Evolution is the consequence of: ___ (life forms have offspring), ___ (offspring are not identical), and ___ (some offspring pass more of their genes on than other offspring).

Answer 50

replication, variation, selection

Question 51

Evolution is not random: The ___ ___ that create variation are an important part of evolution, and they may be random, but ___ ___ is not random.

Answer 51

genetic mutations, natural selection

Question 52

The theory of evolution does not claim that humans evolved from modern monkeys and apes. Based on strong ___ and ___ evidence, it seems clear that modern humans, apes, and monkeys shared ___ ___ millions of years ago.

Answer 52

fossil, genetic, common ancestor

Question 53

Evolution is not synonymous with improvement. There is no ranking of superior or inferior living species in strict evolutionary terms. Evolution is best thought of as the impact of what happened to a ____ over previous ___.

Answer 53

population, generations

Question 54

Evolution is a ___. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret ___. ___ do not go away while scientists debate theories to explain them.

Answer 54

theory, facts

Question 55

The human body is not one ____ but a collection of many. For example, 4,154 species of bacteria have been discovered in the ___, and 2,359 behind the ___.

Answer 55

ecosystem, throat, ears

Question 56

What is “biodiversity”?

Answer 56

a mix of many species

Question 57

US and Chinese scientists looked at more than a thousand people and revealed a strong connection between very healthy old people and very healthy ___ ___.

Answer 57

gut microbiomes

Question 58

Older people in good health consistantly have high ___ ___.

Answer 58

microbiome biodiversity

Question 59

Scientific research strongly indicates that ___ has a positive impact on gut microbes. It seems to increase overall species diversity while also elevating total numbers of beneficial bacteria.

Answer 59

exercise

Question 60

Microscopic life impacts our ___, ___ ___, ___ ___, and immune system performance, as well as the state of the entire global ecosystem.

Answer 60

mood, sleep patterns, food digestion

Question 61

Life is never really ___ on this planet. It shares, steals, competes, loves, kills, and cooperates to form complex and overlapping ___.

Answer 61

alone, ecosystems

Question 62

The universe began ___ billion years ago, providing the time, space, and matter necessary for humans to exist.

Answer 62

13.8

Question 63

The Sun formed ___ billion years ago providing the energy human life depends on.

Answer 63

4.6

Question 64

The Earth formed ___ billion years ago.

Answer 64

4.54

Question 65

The ultimate origin of humans traces back to the beginning of life on Earth, which, based on fossil evidence, is estimated to have occurred at least ___ billion years ago.

Answer 65

4

Question 66

The first humans (early human species) lived in Eastern and Southern ___ about ___ million years ago.

Answer 66

Africa, 2.5

Question 67

Modern humans evolved in ___ about ___ years ago.

Answer 67

Africa; 315,000

Question 68

All people on Earth today are about ___ percent identical to each other (though obviously not clones). Biological races (genetical homogenous populations) don’t exist.

Answer 68

99.9