Astronomy Potpourri Trivia Quiz

Answer: Jupiter

Due to its huge size and gravitation, Jupiter has sucked up countless errant asteroids which, had they impacted with our relatively tiny planet, could easily have extinguished life on Earth on a number of occasions. Kind of gives you a newfound appreciation for far off gas giants, doesn't it?

Answer: The Big Rip

Just as the universe was born with the Big Bang, a relatively recent theory on the death of the universe is the Big Rip. Basically, billions of years from now, the anti-gravity in the universe (which is said to be responsible for its constant expansion) will eventually be so powerful it will force bodies apart at the speed of light. First stars and planets (to the point we wouldn't be able to see the nearest star with the most powerful of telescopes), and eventually atoms and their nuclei "explode".

The opposing theory, the Big Crunch, states that gravity will cause the expansion of the universe to stop and reverse, causing it to collapse in on itself, perhaps into a supermassive black hole. Some have even said it will revert to its pre-Big Bang form (whatever that is) only to undergo another Big Bang, and so on. Whoa.

Answer: Fomalhaut

Hypothetically speaking, Vulcan would actually be the closest to the Sun, laying inside Mercury's orbit. Persephone was one of the suggested names for a tenth planet beyond Pluto, but most astronomers have since written it off as another Kuiper Belt Object. Nibiru, also known as Planet X, is said to be a massive planet which takes over 3000 years to orbit the sun once, and as such is only present in our solar system every couple of millenia.

It has a multitude of elaborate, often farfetched historical theories attached to it, one of which states that its last passage near Earth accounts for biblical events such as the great flood, and that its return will come with other huge cataclysms, even the destruction of Earth. Fomalhaut is the name given to one of the stars in the Milky Way.

Answer: Kuiper

The Kuiper Belt is most likely made up of asteroids as well, but in the absense of empirical data to guarantee what they are, the term applied to these bodies is simply "Kuiper Belt objects" or KBO's. What some scientists have called simple KBO's, others have seen fit to call planets, moons of Pluto, and so on.

Answer: red

When the Sun dies, it will not explode, or simply burn out. As the theory goes, it will enter its dying phase by turning into a red giant. Although it will burn cooler once red, it will balloon to hundreds of times its current size and still burn up all of the planets within the asteroid belt.

Interesting factoid: although chances are humanity will be long gone by then anyway, some scientists have actually suggested the possibility of avoiding extinction by migrating to Pluto, which at that point would have a climate similar to Miami (lack of an atmosphere aside).

Answer: they all have rings

Saturn has the biggest and most visible ones, of course. The other gas planets all have smaller rings that are much fainter and barely visible. Uranus' rings are perpendicular (on a vertical axis instead of horizontal) to the other planets' rings, just like its rotation is. Neptune has what have been called rings, but are really more akin to sections of rings that circle the planet but do not quite reach all around it.

Answer: black holes

The singularity is the center of a black hole, and for a certain distance around the singularity, we find the event horizon. Basically put, the event horizon of a black hole is the point of no return. It is from this point inward that nothing, not even light (hence the term black hole) can escape its gravitational pull.

In other words, no event taking place within that area can be seen, heard or detected. The presence of event horizons (limits to the inescapable part of the gravitation field) explains why the first black hole did not just suck up the entire universe.

Answer: radioactive nebulae

Nebulae, of course, are giant clouds of gas and space dust. Dark nebulae are so called because they get their appearance by blocking some source of light, most often stars. Planetary nebulae are balls of gas emitted by stars nearing the point of extinction, and get their name from their resemblence to planets through less-powerful telescopes. Reflection nebulae, as the name implies, get their appearance by reflecting the light of nearby stars.

Answer: perihelion/aphelion

The prefixes peri and apo refer to the points in orbit when a body is closest and farthest (respectively), from whatever it is orbiting. Perigee and apogee refer to an object orbiting the Earth (the suffix gee is derived from "geo"). Periapsis and apoapsis refer to an object orbiting any other object. Perimeter is not an astronomy term, and apometer, to my knowledge, is not a word.

Answer: False

All stars do eventually die, which happens when they run out of fuel to keep their internal nuclear engine running. The nuclear reactions are what keeps the star from collapsing under its own gravity. When these reactions stop, the star collapses in on itself and becomes a super-dense ball of matter with tremendous gravitation.

However not all stars turn into black holes, as the star would have to be relatively massive in size for its gravity to reach the level of a black hole. Smaller stars (like our Sun) do not become black holes.

They grow in size as they cool down (like with Earth's red giant phase), then contract to a fraction of their original size and become white dwarves, then really burn out and turn to brown dwarves.