Unit 10

Question 1

According to the lecture slides, what is the name of the point where meteors in a meteor shower appear to originate?

Answer 1

Radiant

Question 2

According to Backman and Seeds 2011, how many objects larger than 1 kilometer (km) are likely present in the Kuiper Belt?

Answer 2

About 100 million

Question 3

According to lecture slides, what is the cause of annually recurring meteor showers?

Answer 3

Earth orbits through the debris left from an orbiting comet

Question 4

According to the lecture slides, the ancestors of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde in Oregon revered the large Willamette Meteorite. Which of the following is a practice they carried out?

Answer 4

Dipped arrows in water associated with the meteorite

Question 5

According to Schaefer 1996, why are comets, eclipses, and meteors often seen as bad throughout the world?

Answer 5

Transient events are radical breaks from natural harmony

Question 6

According to lecture slides, how do members of the Paiute and Ute tribes interpret a shooting star event?

Answer 6

Star excrement

Question 7

According to lecture slides, how do members of the Pawnee tribe interpret a meteor shower event?

Answer 7

The souls of the dead being re-incarnated and a good omen

Question 8

According to Backman and Seeds 2011, most meteors one sees in the sky are produced by meteoroids that weigh how much?

Answer 8

Less than 1 gram

Question 9

Using the discussion in the lecture notes, order the following objects by their proximity to Earth. The first object should be the furthest away.

Answer 9

comet/asteroid, meteoroid, meteor, meteorite

Question 10

According to the reading by Backman and Seeds 2011, which of the following does NOT apply to comets?

Sometimes described as a “dirty snowball”
Has a nucleus that remains frozen and inactive while far from the Sun
Has a nucleus that is composed primarily of iron and rocky materials.
Moves along an elliptical orbit
Exhibits a long ion and dust tail when in the inner Solar System

Answer 10

Has a nucleus that is composed primarily of iron and rocky materials.

Question 11

According to Schaefer 1996, what are 4 reasons given by the author for why omens seem to provide accurate predictions?

Answer 11

Failed omens are rapidly forgotten

Interpretations are often made after the outcome is known

Predictions can work as a self-fulfilling prophecy

Omens are ambiguous

Question 12

According to the lecture slides, in Aztec documents, what was interpreted as the first omen of the Spanish arrival?

Answer 12

A comet

Question 13

According to the reading by Backman and Seeds 2011 and the lecture slides, where in the Solar System are most asteroids located?

Answer 13

Between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter

Question 14

According to the lecture slides, what do the Navajo believe you should do if you see a shooting star?

Answer 14

Blow in its direction to avoid bad luck

Question 15

According to the lecture slides, which tribe interprets shooting stars as a shaman searching for people far from their tribe, stealing their spirit, and sometimes eating them?

Answer 15

Cahuilla

Question 16

Where are the origins of comets?

Answer 16

Kuiper belt and Oort cloud

Question 17

More than 75% of the known asteroids:

Answer 17

can be found in a belt between Mars and Jupiter

Question 18

If there are at least a million asteroids, how did spacecraft like Galileo survive their trip through the asteroid belt?

Answer 18

although there are many asteroids, they are widely spaced (there is lots of space between them)

Question 19

In 2013, a small stony asteroid collided with the Earth above the Russian city of Chelyabinsk. What was the result?

Answer 19

A fireball briefly brighter than the Sun could be seen in the sky and many people were hurt

Question 20

What is currently the best way to defend ourselves against an asteroid which is on course to collide with the Earth in 7 years?

Answer 20

If we do it early enough, we could explode something on or near the asteroid to deflect it slightly, so that years later it would then miss the Earth

Question 21

Astronomers estimate that about 25 million meteors strike the Earth’s atmosphere each day. How come we haven’t run out of meteors in the long history of the Earth?

Answer 21

meteors are pieces of dirt left over from the formation of our solar system and from old comets; there is a huge supply of small dirt particles from both sources

Question 22

The ages of stony meteorites have been measured to be roughly equal to:

Answer 22

the oldest ages we have measured for any bodies in the solar system