Lesson 10 from quiz

Question 1

According to current evidence, Pluto is best described as:

Answer 1

A large member of the Kuiper Belt

Question 2

What did scientists find most interesting when they saw the images of Pluto taken by the New Horizons spacecraft in 2015?

Answer 2

The smooth areas and other features suggesting recent geological activity

Question 3

What part of the comet points most away from the sun?

Answer 3

The plasma tail

Question 4

Why isn’t there a planet where the asteroid belt is located?

Answer 4

The first word of the answer is Gravitational/gravity

Question 5

If the hypothesis tracing the extinction of the dinosaurs back to an impact is correct, the dinosaurs died off largely because:

Answer 5

Of global climate effects initiated by dust and smoke that entered the atmosphere after impact

Question 6

What do we call a small piece of the solar system debris found on Earth?

Answer 6

A meteorite

Question 7

Why won’t Pluto collide with Neptune?

Answer 7

The two planets have an orbital resonance that prevents them from colliding

Question 8

What is Charon?

Answer 8

Pluto’s largest moon

Question 9

True or false? Comets appear to race across the sky in photographs, but in reality they remain nearly stationary relative to other stars

Answer 9

True

Question 10

True or false? Pluto is the largest object in the Kuiper Belt?

Answer 10

False

Question 11

Primitive meteorites can be distinguished from other meteorites and terrestrial rocks because they:

Answer 11

Contain a noticeable fraction of pure metallic flakes

Question 12

What is the typical size of comets in the inner solar system?

Answer 12

10 km

Question 13

Halley’s comet is named after the English scientist Edmund Halley because he:

Answer 13

Calculated its orbit and predicted that it would return in 1758

Question 14

We know that there are large gaps in the average distances of asteroids from the Sun (within the asteroid belt) because we:

Answer 14

Have plotted distributions of the orbital radii of the asteroids

Question 15

Which of the following best describes the size of the largest asteroid, Ceres?

Answer 15

It is a little less than half the diameter of our moon

Question 16

Suppose that a large jovian planet had never formed in our solar system. Which of the following would most likely be true?

Answer 16

Neither the asteroid belt nor the Oort cloud would exist

Question 17

Which is the closest to the average distance between asteroids in the asteroid belt?

Answer 17

1 million km

Question 18

Why does the plasma tail always point away from the Sun?

Answer 18

Solar wind