Copper Quizzes

Question 1

What are the differences between open star clusters and globular star clusters

Answer 1

Open clusters are less concentrated, younger, and have fewer stars

Question 2

Which of the following is FALSE?

Answer 2

a nova is more luminous than a supernova

Question 3

What kind of a gas cloud can collapse and form stars?

Answer 3

The gas cloud must have a mass that exceeds the Jeans mass so that gravity overcomes the internal pressure in the cloud

Question 4

What is the mass of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way?

Answer 4

4 million solar masses

Question 5

How do you measure the mass of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way?

Answer 5

Look at the orbits of nearby stars and apply Kepler’s third law

Question 6

About how long does it take light to cross the Milky Way galaxy?

Answer 6

About 100,000 years

Question 7

What does our galaxy look like?

Answer 7

It has a large disk with spiral arms, and is relatively flat and thin
It has clouds of gas and dust in the spiral arms
Older yellow stars are found mostly in the central bulge
Old stars and globular clusters are located in a spherical halo above and below the disk

Question 8

Why do stars in the halo of the galaxy have almost no heavy elements such as carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen?

Answer 8

Halo stars formed before those elements were made

Question 9

Where do stars form in the galaxy today?

Answer 9

In the disk

Question 10

Where are open clusters found?

Answer 10

In the disk

Question 11

In the symbol for the Hubble type of a galaxy, SBc, the “B” denotes:

Answer 11

The presence of a bar

Question 12

What happens to the planets in a galaxy when that galaxy collides with another galaxy?

Answer 12

Nothing, because the spaces between stellar systems in a galaxy is much larger than their size

Question 13

Which properties of spiral galaxies allows us to sub classify them as Sa, Sb, or Sc?

Answer 13

Size of bulge and extent of spiral arms

Question 14

Compared to spiral galaxies, elliptical galaxies have:

Answer 14

Less gas, redder colors, and less new star formation

Question 15

What is the difference between an E0 and an E7 gas?

Answer 15

The E7 has an oval shape and the E0 is circular

Question 16

You will see that the universe is almost 14 billion years old. That means that we see the most distant galaxies as they were when the universe was:

Answer 16

1-2 billion years old

Question 17

According to models of galaxy formation, which population of stars formed first?

Answer 17

The spheroidal population

Question 18

What type of galaxy can result from collisions between galaxies?

Answer 18

Elliptical or irregular

Question 19

What is a starburst galaxy?

Answer 19

A galaxy with a very high rate of star formation

Question 20

In what part of the spectrum are starburst galaxies brightest?

Answer 20

Infrared

Question 21

What parameters do Hubble’s law relate to each other?

Answer 21

Galaxy recession velocity and distance

Question 22

What technique for measuring distance can you use to discover Hubble’s law?

Answer 22

Cepheid variables in galaxies and white dwarf supernovae in galaxies

Question 23

How do you measure the speed of a galaxy relative to you?

Answer 23

Doppler shifts

Question 24

What is Hubble’s law?

Answer 24

The faster a galaxy is moving, the farther away it is

Question 25

Where is the center of the Universe?

Answer 25

Universe?
There is no center to the Universe. Expansion is happening everywhere.

Question 26

How have astronomers interpreted the unexpectedly fast rotation of galaxies?

Answer 26

There must be a lot of dark matter whose gravity can be felt but not seen

Question 27

Which of the following is not true about dark matter?

Answer 27

Dark matter and dark energy are two aspects of the same phenomenon

Question 28

Why do we think there is a lot of dark matter in clusters of galaxies?

Answer 28

Individual galaxies are moving so fast that they could not be held together by the gravity of visible matter
Gravitational lensing lets us measure mass even when we can’t see it

Question 29

How do we know that the universe’s expansion is speeding up?

Answer 29

We look at objects from different times in the past to see how expansion changes with time

Question 30

How could the universe be accelerating, despite the gravitational pull of all the matter in it?

Answer 30

There could be a new force or property of space that affects the universe on its largest scales

Question 31

What fundamental particles make up a Hydrogen-1 atom?

Answer 31

one proton, one electron

Question 32

Which force is responsible for holding the nucleus together via gluons?

Answer 32

strong

Question 33

What three fundamental particles are you made of?

Answer 33

up quarks, down quarks, and electrons

Question 34

How many types of fundamental particles exist?

Answer 34

30

Question 35

How many up quarks are there in Helium-3?

Answer 35

5

Question 36

Which has the events in the right order, from early to late?

Answer 36

quark soup, protons form, nucleosynthesis, recombination, star formation

Question 37

Now what happens because of recombination?

Answer 37

the cosmic microwave background is produced

Question 38

What forms in nucleosynthesis?

Answer 38

most of the Helium-4 in the Universe

Question 39

What is a quasar?

Answer 39

a very luminous source due to a black hole at the center of a galaxy that is quickly growing

Question 40

How did conditions differ from the present era when the Universe was young?

Answer 40

the young Universe was hotter, more dense, and smoother