So Many Stars, So Little Time. Quiz

Answer: Theory of Relativity (Special)

Time dilation is one of the more fascinating results of Einstein's work. The key lies in holding the speed of light constant. One thought scenario to illuminate this idea goes something like this:

Imagine a 'light-clock' built from two parallel mirrors and it will 'tick' every time the light bounces off a mirror. Then imagine sitting with the clock on your desk and watching it tick away, up, down, up, down. Suddenly, the clock shoots off your desk at the instant it ticks off of the top mirror. In order to hit the bottom mirror, it must now cover a longer distance. This is where it gets strange.

The governing equation is Distance (d) = Velocity (v) multiplied by Time(t) or d = vt. In our everyday experience with clocks, we could solve this by telling the light to speed up in order to keep the time consistent. Einstein is telling us that can't happen. V is not allowed to change. That means that, since the clock was moving fast, the light would have to travel a longer distance to keep ticking. The only possible conclusion is that the time must increase as well. This is a loose description of how time would 'dilate' for a fast moving object.

Answer: yellow dwarf

Our Sun's complete label is a main sequence yellow dwarf star. The main sequence portion refers to the fact that our Sun is in the 'prime' of its 10 billion year, or so, lifespan. It is labeled yellow due to the fact it emits most of its light in the yellow-to-white range of the visible spectrum.

As the sun gets near its end, it will grow to be a red giant, but is not large enough to go super-nova or become a black hole.

Answer: No, all parts of the moon get sunlight.

This is a question that gets renowned astrophysicist, Neil Degrasse Tyson, in a tizzy. From our perspective on earth, we only see one side of the moon. Our moon is 'tidally locked', meaning it rotates just fast enough to keep the same side facing the earth at all times. One half of the moon's surface is always lit by the Sun.

When we see a half moon, one half of the back side is illuminated. When we have a new moon, the entire back side gets light.

Answer: Jupiter

Jupiter, the most massive planet in our solar system, is larger than all of the other planets combined and doubled. The mass of Jupiter, in kilograms, is just short of a two, followed by twenty-seven zeros.

This is approximately 2.5 times more than ALL of the other planets, combined.

Answer: Event Horizon Telescope (EHT)

Telescopes are typically tasked to different parts of the spectrum of light. The Einstein Probe focuses on X-Rays. The VLT covers from near-ultraviolet, through visible light, to the mid-infrared. Hubble is primarily a visible light instrument.

The EHT is a collection of eight synchronized radio observatories stationed around the globe(Chile-2, Spain, Mexico, Arizona (U.S.), Hawaii-2, South Pole). This setup allowed the aperture of the lens (the hole that lets the light in) to be the size of the earth. It needed to be that big to have any chance at seeing something 55 million light years distant with any clarity.

Answer: Our Sun is too small

The minimum size required for a star to become a black hole is about 20 times the mass of the Sun. Anything smaller simply doesn't have enough mass crashing down after a supernova to overcome the core of the star pushing back. The smaller stars become either white dwarfs or neutron stars.

Answer: neutron star

Neutron stars are what you can get if a star isn't large enough to crash all the way down to a black hole. For example, a star that is about eight times the mass of our Sun will crash all the way down to a ball of neutrons about 20 km (or 12 miles) in diameter. That is how you get such enormous density.

Answer: Earth

The Greek term, planetae, meaning "wanderers", is the source of the English term planet. Anything that moved across the sky, was a planet. Earth was considered stationary, hence, not a planet.

The Greeks had seven items they believed to be planets (in the order they believed them to be from Earth); the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

Answer: Strong Force

Contrary to popular belief, gravity is an extremely weak force relative to the others as its value is dependent on the mass of the objects involved. The weak force helps drive radioactive decay. The strong force is what holds quarks together to make protons and neutrons. To put some numbers with it, the strong force is about million times stronger than the weak force and a ten followed by thirty-eight zeros times stronger than gravity.

Answer: Spaghettification

The gravity in a black hole is so extreme that the difference in gravitational forces between your feet and head will be enough to snap you in half. As you travel down, this process repeats until you are just a stream of particles headed towards the singularity.