Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Gas Giant Quiz

Answer: hydrogen and helium

Gas Giants are often called Jovian planets, named after Jupiter, a classic example of a gas giant, although there is a lot of variety among this class of planets.

Answer: Ice Giants

Methane is the component that gives Neptune and Uranus their blue color.

Answer: They all generate less energy than they take in from the sun.

Jupiter produces more heat than it receives from the sun. This is thought to be because its "surface" is cooling, which causes compression of its layers resulting in heat production. This is called the Kelvin-Helmholtz mechanism. Saturn seems to do the same, but it is not certain as to whether the heat production is as great or not.

All four of the gas giants in our solar system have rings as well as many moons, from as few as eight to almost twenty.

Answer: a rocky planet

Actually it was a pair of rocky planets that was discovered in 1992 by two radio astronomers (Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail) and this discovery was quickly confirmed. They were orbiting a star in the constellation Virgo, located 980 light-years from the Earth.

The first gas giant was discovered by Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz of the University of Geneva in 1995; it was named 51 Pegasi B-Bellerphon.

As of March 11, 2011 538 extrasolar planets had been discovered. This number changes frequently, having gone up since I started working on this quiz.

Answer: transit technique

The transit technique is one in which the observed planet transits or passes directly in front of its home star with respect to the earth. This enables scientists to determine its size.

Answer: They most likely formed at their present location in relation to their host star.

It is thought that Hot Jupiters migrated from a distance farther out from their host sun to their present location because there would not have been enough material in that close proximity to a star for a planet of such a large size to have formed.

One astronomical unit is equal to the distance from the Earth to the sun.

Answer: mean motion orbital resonance

The gravitational pull of the orbits of the two planets gradually move them further out. Some believe that it is possible that the mean motion orbital resonance between Jupiter and Saturn caused a gravitational push that sent Uranus and Neptune into higher orbits. This gives new meaning to the term "Dancing With the Stars".

Answer: Eccentric Jupiters

Eccentric Jupiters often have an elliptical orbit, like comets. One source sited reported that approximately 7% of the exoplanets are of this type. As research continues that percentage will possibly change.

Answer: Tyche

John Matese and Daniel Whitmire of the University of Louisiana believe that data already gathered by Nasa's WIRE space telescope will provide evidence of this planet; the data has yet to be analyzed. Many current astronomers are skeptical of the presence of Tyche and await substantial evidence.

Answer: James Blish, 20th century American science fiction writer

James Blish coined the term in his short story "Solar Plexus" when it was released in an anthology in 1952. Giordano Bruno proposed the idea that other stars might have planets centuries earlier, and Sir Isaac Newton had the same idea in the 18th century.