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Test #3 (Ch. 9-12)
ASTR 10
1. If we could put all the asteroids together, their total mass would be ________.
A. much less than the mass of any terrestrial planet
B. about the mass of Mercury
C. about the mass of Earth
D. greater than the mass of Earth but less than the mass of Jupiter
2. Gaps in the asteroid belt (often called Kirkwood gaps) are caused by ________.
A. tidal forces from the Sun
B. the competing gravitational tugs of Mars and Jupiter
C. orbital resonances with Jupiter
D. tidal forces from Jupiter
3. When you see the bright flash of a meteor, what are you actually seeing?
A. emission of visible light from a particle that has not yet entered Earth's atmosphere
B. the flash that occurs when a speeding rock from space hits the ground
C. a star that has suddenly shot across the sky
D. the glow from a pea-size particle and the surrounding air as the particle burns up in our atmosphere
4. Suppose you find a meteorite made almost entirely of metal. According to current science, which of the following
statements must be true?
A. The meteorite must have formed near the orbit of Mercury.
B. Your meteorite is a fragment of an object from the Kuiper belt.
C. Your meteorite was blasted off the surface of Mars by an impact.
D. Your meteorite is a fragment from the core of a large asteroid that shattered in a collision.
5. Which of the following objects are probably not located in the same general region of the solar system in which they
originally formed?
A. Kuiper belt comets
B. Pluto
C. Oort cloud comets
D. asteroids of the asteroid belt
6. Why won't Pluto collide with Neptune?
A. Pluto's orbit never comes anywhere close to Neptune's orbit.
B. Pluto is always much farther from the Sun than Neptune.
C. Pluto orbits the Sun exactly two times for every three Neptune orbits, which ensures they never come close together.
D. Actually, a collision of the two is inevitable within the next billion years.
7. Among discovered meteorites, we have found some with all the following origins except ________.
A. being a fragment of a shattered asteroid
B. being a fragment from the surface of Mars
C. being a fragment from Comet Halley
D. being a fragment from the surface of the Moon
8. What do asteroids and comets have in common?
A. They have similar orbital radii.
B. They have a similar range of orbital inclinations.
C. Most are unchanged since their formation in the solar
D. They have similar densities.
E. They have nothing in common with each other.
nebula.
9. Why do asteroids and comets differ in composition?
A. Comets are much larger than asteroids.
B. Asteroids formed inside the frost line, while comets
C. Asteroids are much larger than comets.
D. Asteroids and comets formed at different times.
formed outside.
10. What characteristic distinguishes a meteorite from a terrestrial rock?
A. A meteorite usually has a high metal content.
B. A meteorite is usually covered with a dark crust from burning in Earth's atmosphere.
C. Meteorites contain rare elements, such as iridium, that terrestrial rocks do not.
D. Meteorites have different isotope ratios of particular elements when compared to terrestrial
E. All of the above are true.
rocks.
11. All meteorites collected on Earth come from asteroids or comets.
A. True.
B. False.
12. Oort-cloud comets are so far from the Sun that the gravity of neighboring stars can alter their orbits.
A. True.
B. False.
13. Which new idea has been added into our theory of solar system formation as a result of the discoveries of
extrasolar planets?
A. In addition to the categories of terrestrial and jovian, there must be an "in-between" category of planet
that has the mass of a jovian planet but the composition of a terrestrial planet.
B. Planets can migrate from the orbits in which they are born.
C. In some star systems, it is possible for jovian planets to form in the inner solar system and terrestrial
planets to form in the outer solar system.
D. Some of the "exceptions to the rules" in our own solar system are likely to have been the result of
giant impacts.
14. Indirect detection of an extrasolar planet means ________.
A. seeing the planet with the naked eye
B. acquiring images or spectra of the planet
C. sending a space probe to the planet
D. observing the planet's effect on its host star
15. What is the transit method of finding extrasolar planets?
A. monitoring a star to detect periodic dips in its brightness from the planet passing behind the star
B. monitoring a star to detect periodic dips in its brightness from the planet passing in front of the star
C. observing a star during the rare occasion of another star passing directly in front of it; slight changes
in how the light is bent by gravity can indicate the presence of planets around the closer star
D. measuring the spectrum of the star for a periodic variation in its Doppler shift
16. The Doppler technique can be used to measure the orbital period of a planet by
A. measuring the amount by which the starlight is reduced when the planet transits.
B. measuring the asymmetries in the velocity curve.
C. measuring the speed at which the star orbits the mutual center-of-mass of the star and planet.
D. measuring the time it takes for the star's line-of-sight velocity to cycle from peak to peak
17. In the late 1800s, Kelvin and Helmholtz suggested that the Sun stayed hot due to gravitational contraction.
What was the major drawback to this idea?
A. It predicted that the Sun would shrink noticeably as we watched it, but the Sun appears to be stable in
size.
B. It predicted that the Sun could shine for about 25 million years, but geologists had already found that
Earth is much older than this.
C. It is physically impossible to generate heat simply by making a star shrink in size.
D. It predicted that Earth would also shrink in size with time, which would make it impossible to have
stable geology on our planet.
18. What do we mean when we say that the Sun is in gravitational equilibrium?
A. The hydrogen gas in the Sun is balanced so that it never rises upward or falls downward.
B. There is a balance within the Sun between the outward push of pressure and the inward pull
of
gravity.
C. The Sun always has the same amount of mass, creating the same gravitational force.
D. The Sun maintains a steady temperature
19. The Sun's surface seethes and churns with a bubbling pattern. Why?
A. The Sun's surface is boiling.
B. The churning gas is being stirred up by the strong solar wind.
C. The churning is an illusion created by varying radiation, as the gas
on the Sun's surface is actually
quite still.
D. We are seeing hot gas rising and cool gas falling due to the convection that occurs beneath the
surface.
20. If the Sun's core suddenly shrank a little bit, what would happen in the Sun?
A. The core would heat up, fusion rates would increase, the core would re-expand.
B. The core would cool off and continue to shrink as its density increased.
C. The density of the core would decrease, causing the core to cool off and expand.
D. The core would heat up, causing it to radiate so much energy that it would shrink
even more.
21. Why does the Sun emit neutrinos?
A. Convection releases neutrinos, which random walk through the radiation zone.
B. Fusion in the Sun's core creates neutrinos.
C. Solar flares create neutrinos with magnetic fields.
D. The Sun was born with a supply of neutrinos that it gradually emits into space.
E. The Sun does not emit neutrinos.
22. Why do sunspots appear dark in pictures of the Sun?
A. They are holes in the solar surface through which we can
see through to deeper, darker layers of the
Sun.
B. They are too cold to emit any visible light.
C. They are extremely hot and emit all their radiation as X-rays rather than visible light.
D. They actually are fairly bright, but appear dark against the even brighter background of the
surrounding photosphere.
23. How can we best observe the Sun's chromosphere and corona?
A. The chromosphere is best observed with infrared telescopes
and the corona is best observed with
ultraviolet telescopes.
B. The chromosphere and corona are both best studied with radio telescopes.
C. The chromosphere is best observed with ultraviolet telescopes and the corona is best observed with
X-ray telescopes.
D. The chromosphere and corona are both best studied with visible light.
24. From center outward, which of the following lists the "layers" of the Sun in the correct order?
A. core, radiation zone, convection zone, photosphere, chromosphere, corona
B. core, radiation zone, convection zone, corona, chromosphere, photosphere
C. core, convection zone, radiation zone, corona, chromosphere, photosphere
D. core, corona, radiation zone, convection zone, photosphere, chromosphere
25. What is the solar wind?
A. the wind that causes huge arcs of gas to rise above the Sun's surface
B. a stream of charged particles flowing outward from the surface of the Sun
C. the uppermost layer of the Sun, lying just above the corona
D. the strong wind that blows sunspots around on the surface of the Sun
26. The proton-proton chain is ________.
A. the specific set of nuclear reactions through which the Sun fuses hydrogen into helium
B. the linkage of numerous protons into long chains
C. another name for the force that holds protons together in atomic nuclei
D. an alternative way of generating energy that is different from the fusion of hydrogen into
helium
27. What do sunspots, solar prominences, and solar flares all have in common?
A. They all occur only in the Sun's photosphere.
B. They are all shaped by the solar wind.
C. They are all strongly influenced by magnetic fields on the Sun.
D. They all have about the same temperature.
28. Although the Sun does not generate energy by gravitational contraction today, this energy-generation mechanism was
important when the Sun was forming.
A. True
B. False
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