The Most Boring Quiz Ever!

Answer: Water ice.

The MIP provided the first conclusive proof of water on the moon. It was a major victory for India in its space race with China, and it also arrived at the moon shortly before a similar NASA mission. Costing only 58 million dollars, it has been hailed as one of the most cost-effective lunar exploration programs in history.

Both the Indian and the NASA missions could be seen as much smaller versions of Project A119, a rejected American Cold War plan to set off a nuclear detonation on the moon that would have been visible to the naked eye.

Answer: They provide geothermal heat to over 80% of the buildings in Iceland.

Iceland derives almost all of its energy from geothermal and hydroelectric power, making it one of the least fossil-fuel dependent nations in the world. Iceland's position in a highly geologically-active region makes it uniquely well-suited for geothermal power. In addition, geothermal energy works best in cold countries like Iceland, where hot water can be piped directly to houses, rather than being inefficiently converted to electricity and then back to heat.

Although no other country remotely approaches Iceland in terms of percent of energy derived from geothermal, both China and the United States produce far more geothermal energy in absolute terms.

Answer: He had just found, and killed, the oldest single tree ever discovered at that date.

Prometheus the Bristlecone Pine had 4,862 countable rings. The rings at its center were too rotten to examine, but the tree was almost certainly over 5,000 years old. The world-record holder in 2015 is another bristlecone, which is 5,065 years old.

There are several competing stories that differ in the details of how and why Prometheus was cut down, but the version given above has been published in multiple reputable sources.

Answer: Laurent Clerc, one of the founders of American Sign Language, accidentally poked out one of his eardrums with an awl.

Awls were a defining part of the technological explosion of the Middle Paleolithic. By enabling the creation of better cold-weather clothing, the awl might have been responsible for allowing modern humans to expand into Europe. The oldest awl found by 2015 was 70,000 years old, and made from bone.

Answer: Pollen cores allow scientists to reconstruct the plant communities of ancient forests that used to surround the bogs.

Pollen cores are one of the best methods we have for determining the composition of ancient forests. In addition to peat bogs, pollen cores can also be obtained from layers of sediment at the bottom of lakes.

Answer: Several new species of fish have been discovered in Lake Vostok.

No multicellular life has been found in Lake Vostok. The possibility of subglacial lakes in Antarctica was first proposed by Peter Kropotkin, who is more famous in his role as one of the founders of political anarchism. There are now several known subglacial Antarctic lakes.

It has been speculated pressure differentials between different lakes might lead to the spontaneous creation of temporary high-velocity subglacial rivers between lakes.

Answer: Over the last 800,000 years before 1950, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have never been higher than about 3/4 of what they are now.

Ice cores allow us to reconstruct the ancient atmosphere, while tree cores and pollen cores give hints about the ancient climate. Together, these different types of cores help us determine the historical relationship between greenhouse gas levels and temperature.

Answer: A vault containing over 840,000 seeds, in the attempt to record and preserve plant biodiversity.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is the world's largest seed bank. It contains samples of both rare plant species and cultivars of domestic plants. It has the joint mission of preserving genetic diversity for the future, as well as storing back-up copies of material from research seedbanks.

When the Syrian Civil War forced the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas to move headquarters, it was able to re-establish itself from samples it had stored in the Svalbard vault.

Answer: Fungi that use radiation to produce food, similar to the way that plants use sunlight to produce food.

The Chernobyl fungi were the first radiotrophic (radiation-eating) organisms ever found. They use the pigment melanin to absorb radiation in a manner similar to the way chlorophyll absorbs sunlight. However, at the time of writing this quiz, the full chemical cycle of the radiotrophic process has not been identified, and researchers are divided over the question of whether the fungi can use radiation to produce sugars from carbon dioxide, or if they just use the radioactive energy to cycle back and forth between simple and complex carbohydrates.

Answer: The Super Kamiokande Neutrino Observatory, which provided the first strong evidence that muon neutrinos can change into tau neutrinos.

Super Kamiokande is the world's most important neutrino observatory. In 2001, the facility was almost completely disabled when 6,600 photomultiplier tubes imploded, but the facility was largely rebuilt. The Baigong Pipes are in China, although their age is disputed, and some doubt that they are man-made at all. The other two options are completely fictitious.