Science trivia

[buildit]

Because science makes your guns work and the more you know the greater your ability to understand science becomes. I do these for a select group of 400 people already so it is no problem for me to copy and post them here too. They are all multiple choice or true or false questions and range from astrophysics to zoology. They also vary greatly in difficulty since someone can be very knowledgable about chemistry and know very little about biology. The answer is always given below the options with an explanation and link for more information.
So with that said here is todays trivia.

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12-2-17 trivia. Pictured below is what should be a famous scientific laboratory and I have been there! What is name of the facility where it is located?
A. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee
B. Brookhaven National Laboratory, NY
C. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Washington
D. Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL) Batavia, Illinois.

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C. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Washington
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is also called the Hanford site by most people. ;-)
Beyond PNNL, the National Science Foundation's LIGO, or the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, also is right here in Richland. LIGO's mission is to observe gravitational waves of cosmic origin. Some of its research aims to unravel mysteries surrounding the formation of black holes and the birth of the universe.
Later this month, I look forward to helping celebrate the installation of advanced gravitational wave detectors at LIGO. The new instruments will enable even more advanced research because they are more sensitive and significantly increase the volume of space that LIGO will survey.
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) is designed to open the field of gravitational-wave astrophysics through the direct detection of gravitational waves predicted by Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. LIGO’s multi-kilometer-scale gravitational wave detectors use laser interferometry to measure the minute ripples in space-time caused by passing gravitational waves from cataclysmic cosmic sources such as the mergers of pairs of neutron stars or black holes, or by supernovae. LIGO consists of two widely separated interferometers within the United States—one in Hanford, Washington and the other in Livingston, Louisiana—operated in unison to detect gravitational waves.

 

[glocknorm]

If you look hard you can see my house on the horizon. You’d better drop by if you come out here.

 

[buildit]

If you look hard you can see my house on the horizon. You’d better drop by if you come out here.

I was at Hanford years ago when LIGO was still a dream. The facility is truly huge and has facilities from all over the USA preforming operations there. What you see there is really amazing.

 

[glocknorm]

I worked at PNNL for years.

 

[buildit]

I'd still love to see Los Alamos and Oak Ridge someday.

 

[buildit]

12-3-17 trivia. What is a Schwarzschild radius?
A. The radius needed to orbit the Earth forever if friction was not a factor
B. The radius of the suns corona based upon plasma radiation
C. The radius of any object compressed to a black hole
D. The radius of Arnold's Arms When he was a professional body builder



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C. The radius of any object compressed to a black hole
How far can you compress something before you reach nature’s ultimate breaking point—that is, before you create a black hole?
Inspired by Einstein’s theory of general relativity and its novel vision of gravity, the German physicist Karl Schwarzschild took on this question in 1916. His work revealed the limit at which gravity triumphs over the other physical forces, creating a black hole.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/physics/2011/12/the-schwarzschild-radius-natures-breaking-point/

 

[glocknorm]

I met Arnold way back before he could speak much English. He was a poster child for Nutri-Systems at the time.

 

[buildit]

12-4-17 trivia. What is WFIRST?
A. Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope
B. Wood Framed Iodine Rinsed Sun Tanning
C. Wesly Falder Inverted Radio Signal Telescope
D. West Florida Institute of InterResonance Science and Technology
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A. Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope
Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) – a mission concept to answer vital questions in both exoplanet detection and dark energy research.
The powerful role that spaceborne telescopes can play in the future was underscored by a seminal study in 2010 called New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics, written by the U.S. National Research Council. That study, which laid out a blueprint for ground- and space-based astronomy and astrophysics for the decade of the 2010s, rated WFIRST as the top-priority large-scale mission.
https://www.nasa.gov/wfirst

 

[aDave]

I'd still love to see Los Alamos and Oak Ridge someday.

I went to Los Alamos a couple of years ago on a NM trip. Pretty neat place. If you go there, take a trip up the mountain and see the Valles Caldera National Preserve. It's beautiful there. If you are a Longmire fan, it's where his house is located/filmed.

Great idea for a thread, BTW. So far, I'm zero for three, but I like stuff like this.

 

[buildit]

I went to Los Alamos a couple of years ago on a NM trip. Pretty neat place. If you go there, take a trip up the mountain and see the Valles Caldera National Preserve. It's beautiful there. If you are a Longmire fan, it's where his house is located/filmed.

Great idea for a thread, BTW. So far, I'm zero for three, but I like stuff like this.

I'm all about science and since I don't work in a lab anymore I like helping others learn about it or just expanding my own knowledge.

 

[buildit]

12-5-17 trivia. Fermilab is working on a new detection system called......
A. PALE (Proton Accelerator Loop Experiment)
B. DUNE (the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment)
C. ANT (A Nutrino Telescope)
D.SLAMS (SpaceLab Antimatter System)

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B. DUNE, the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment
At Fermilab's flagship experiment DUNE, the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, the lab will send neutrinos 800 miles through Earth's mantle to a former gold mine in Lead, South Dakota. Scientists will use giant detectors to study the neutrinos' travel patterns over that distance, recording neutrino interactions at either end of the journey. Scientists will search for new subatomic phenomena and potentially transform our understanding of neutrinos and their role in the universe. The Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility will provide the neutrino beamline and the infrastructure that will support the DUNE detectors.
http://fnal.gov/pub/science/particle-physics/experiments/neutrinos.html

 

[backlash]

If you look hard you can see my house on the horizon. You’d better drop by if you come out here.

Looks like we are neighbors.
If the Rattlesnake hills weren't in the way I could see it from my house.
My Dad worked there in the late 50s.
He said the drive into work was called the Hanford 500 because everyone speeding down that little 2 lane road.

 

[glocknorm]

Interesting! I see Rattlesnake Mtn from my house. Look the other way & I can see the Hanford Site. Do you shoot at the TCSA? I’m an RSO at the shotgun range.

 

[buildit]

He said the drive into work was called the Hanford 500 because everyone speeding down that little 2 lane road.

It sure was like that when I went there and I was there right after the wild fire which started because someone crashed.

 

[buildit]

12-6-17 trivia. Which four planets in our solar system are the non terrestrial worlds?
A. Mercury, Earth, Venus and Mars
B. Venus, Earth, Neptune and Pluto
C. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune
D. Earth, Mars, Neptune and Uranus

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C. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune
Terrestrial planets are Earth-like planets (in Latin, terra means Earth) made up of rocks or metals with a hard surface — making them different from other planets that lack a solid surface. Terrestrial planets also have a molten heavy metal core, few moons, and topological features such as valleys, volcanoes and craters.
In our solar system, there are four terrestrial planets, which also happen to be the four closest to the sun: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. During the creation of the solar system, there were likely more terrestrial planetoids, but they likely merged or were destroyed.
https://www.space.com/17028-terrestrial-planets.html

 

[buildit]

12-7-17 trivia. So if I stimulate radiation producing an amplified microwave emission, what do I have?
A. A firearm
B. A Laser
C. A Maser
D. A hole in my pants


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C. A Maser
Maser generally refers to a device which is used for creation and amplification of an intense and coherent beam of high frequency radio waves. Laser is same as the maser, but it specifically applies to infrared or optical wavelengths only. Laser has evolved from maser.
Maser stands for Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Laser stands for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.
Laser and maser are based on the concept of stimulated emission introduced by the Einstein. This concept is described as a process in which an electron moves to a lower energy due to an interaction with electromagnetic waves.
http://www.differencebetween.info/difference-between-laser-and-maser

 

[buildit]

12-8-17 trivia. Is it true that Mars is 1.5 times the distance from the sun that the Earth is? Or false, the distance much greater or less than that.
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True
Earth is 1AU and Mars is 1.523AU so one and a half the distance of Earth.

Planet Dist. (in AUs)
Mercury 0.387
Venus 0.723
Earth 1.000
Mars 1.523
Jupiter 5.202
Saturn 9.538
Uranus 19.181
Neptune 30.057
Pluto (min.)*29.69
Pluto (avg.) 39.44
Pluto (max.) 49.19
https://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/9-12/features/F_How_Far_How_Faint.html

 

[buildit]

12-9-17 trivia. Tidally locked bodies always have a 1:1 ratio of rotation to orbit because they have one side always facing the body they are orbiting, like our moon does Earth. True or False?


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False
Mercury has a 3:2 orbit
Mercury’s tidally locked orbit is a good example of how the universe always throws astronomers a few surprises.
The planet is tidally (or gravitationally) locked to our Sun, but this is not the typical “synchronous” tidal locking with a 1:1 ratio of rotation and orbit, such as the Moon and Earth, with the same face always presented to the larger partner. Mercury is locked into a what’s known as a 3:2 spin-orbit resonance, which is unique in our solar system.
The thing about the universe is that things look different from different places. Although Mercury’s orbital period is around 88 Earth days, from Earth it appears to move around its orbit in around 116 days (because we are moving too).
With Mercury’s 3:2 resonance it rotates exactly three times for every two revolutions the planet makes around the Sun. Yet the Sun is also turning. From the Sun’s frame of reference, Mercury appears to rotate only once every two Mercurian years. So the little yellow men who live in the caves there have to wait two years to see a single day go by, or about 176 Earth days. Birthdays must be complicated!
So how did astronomers get the idea that Mercury was synchronously locked to the Sun? This was because whenever Mercury was best placed for observation it was nearly always in the some point in its freaky 3:2 orbital resonance, so was showing the same face to observers on Earth. Since, by coincidence, Mercury’s rotatation (58.7 Earth days) is almost exactly half of its orbital period as observed from Earth (116 days). It was not until the radar observations of the planet in 1965 that astronomers learned the truth of its orbital antics.
http://chrismcmahon.net/mercurys-tidally-locked-orbit/

 

[buildit]

12-10-17 trivia. It is a shame that Andromeda is the only galaxy close enough to be viewed from a house hold sized telescope.
True or False?


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False
NGC 300 lies only 7 million light years away, spans nearly the same amount of sky as the full moon, and is visible with a small telescope toward the constellation of Sculptor.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap020821.html

 

[buildit]

12-11-17 trivia. Snow flakes are fun to watch but look close like German mathematician Johannes Kepler did and you'll see they have ........ sides because of ..................
A. Five, Oxygen
B. Six, molecular weight
C. Eight, Surface tension
D. Six, Hydrogen bonds


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Scientists now know that H2O takes on a six-sided structure because of the way hydrogen bonds link water molecules. Kepler’s crystal ponderings laid the groundwork for the field of crystallography, which famously helped reveal the architecture of DNA and now investigates the structure of everything from diamonds to viruses.
https://www.sciencenews.org/sponsor...wflakes-highlights-their-beauty-and-diversity

 

[buildit]

12-12-17 trivia. Quantum fields carry a certain amount of energy, even in seemingly empty space, and the amount of energy gets bigger as the fields get bigger. As the field gets larger what else increases?
A. Entropy
B. Mass
C. Heat
D. Energy
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B. Mass
"Quantum fields carry a certain amount of energy, even in seemingly empty space, and the amount of energy gets bigger as the fields get bigger. According to Einstein, energy and mass are equivalent (that's the message of E=mc2), so piling up energy is exactly like piling up mass. Go big enough, and the amount of energy in the quantum fields becomes so great that it creates a black hole that causes the universe to fold in on itself. Oops."
https://www.space.com/36273-theory-special-relativity.html

 

[buildit]

12-13-17 Trivia. What is the largest living organism on Earth we know of?
A. Red Oak
B. Blue Whale
C. Pacific Sea Kelp
D. Honey Fungus
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D. Honey Fungus
The parasitic and apparently tasty honey fungus ( Armillaria solidipes) not only divides opinions; it is also widely seen as the largest living organism on Earth.
More precisely, a specific honey fungus measuring 2.4 miles (3.8 km) across in the Blue Mountains in Oregon is thought to be the largest living organism on Earth.
The discovery of this giant Armillaria ostoyae in 1998 heralded a new record holder for the title of the world's largest known organism, believed by most to be the 110-foot- (33.5-meter-) long, 200-ton blue whale. Based on its current growth rate, the fungus is estimated to be 2,400 years old but could be as ancient as 8,650 years, which would earn it a place among the oldest living organisms as well.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-largest-organism-is-fungus/
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141114-the-biggest-organism-in-the-world

 

[buildit]

12-14-17 trivia. "3 trillion: The number of stars that reside in the Phoenix cluster's central galaxy, compared to 200 billion or so in our own Milky Way." It also has a giant black hole which is given a low end estimate of being ........ times the mass of our sun!
A. 10 Thousand
B. 10 Billion
C. 10 Million
D. 10 Trillion
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B. 10 Billion
10 billion: The low-end estimate of the mass of the huge black hole at the heart of Phoenix's central galaxy, in solar masses. That's about as massive as the biggest black hole ever discovered.
https://www.space.com/17129-phoenix-galaxy-cluster-by-the-numbers.html

 

[buildit]

12-15-17 trivia. So the downward force felt by someone in a lift could be equally due to an upward acceleration of the lift or to gravity. Pulses of light sent upwards from a clock on the lift floor will be Doppler shifted, or redshifted, when the lift is accelerating upwards, meaning that this clock will appear to tick more slowly when its flashes are compared at the ceiling of the lift to another clock.
What is this statement defining?
A. Gravity's effects on time
B. How a gravity field can mimic acceleration
C. How space time warps
D. Why it takes longer to get to work on the top floor
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B. How a gravity field can mimic acceleration
At least that is the most accurate answer as space time warping can be achieved thru acceleration or a gravity field produced by mass which effects time by warping space. It also effects the pico second difference in reaching the top floor as opposed to a point horizontal but the same distance away.
Because there is no way to tell gravity and acceleration apart, the same will hold true in a gravitational field; in other words the greater the gravitational pull experienced by a clock, or the closer it is to a massive body, the more slowly it will tick.
Confirmation of this effect supports the idea that gravity is a manifestation of space–time curvature because the flow of time is no longer constant throughout the universe but varies according to the distribution of massive bodies. Reinforcing the idea of space–time curvature is important when distinguishing between different theories of quantum gravity because there are some versions of string theory in which matter can respond to something other than the geometry of space–time.
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2010/feb/17/gravitys-effect-on-time-confirmed

 

[buildit]

12-16-17 Trivia. A blazar and a quasar are essentially the same thing and produced by similar processes.
True or false

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true
Well blazar isn’t a common term you’ll hear a lot and it’s actually not very different from a quasar. The picture above is essentially a blazar. It has an intensely bright central nucleus (or part of a classification called “active galactic nuclei” or AGN) containing a supermassive black hole. What’s really crazy about blazars is that the emitted light which sometimes includes extremely high energy gamma rays, can be over a hundred million times more energetic than the highest energy X-rays that the Chandra X-ray Observatory can study.
A blazar is a galaxy which, like a quasar, has an intensely bright central nucleus containing a supermassive black hole. In a blazar, however, the emitted light sometimes includes extremely high energy gamma rays, sometimes over a hundred million times more energetic than the highest energy X-rays that the Chandra X-ray Observatory can study. The overall emission has several other unique properties as well, including that its intensity can vary dramatically with time.
Astronomers suspect that this bizarre behavior results when matter falling onto the vicinity of the massive black hole erupts into powerful, narrow beams of high velocity charged particles. The intense X-ray and gamma ray emission we see, and the variability as well, are thought to be the results of our fortuitously staring right down the throats of such cosmic monsters. But blazars are among the rarest of active nuclei, with only about 2700 known, and the physical processes that trigger and sustain such jets are still not known. Although relatively few, their powerful emissions make them major contributors to the overall picture of the cosmos.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2011-09-blazars.html#jCp

 

[buildit]

12-16-17 Trivia. In winter the Milky Way is fainter than the glorious broad band we see in a Northern Hemisphere summer or Southern Hemisphere winter. This is because the denser winter air is obscuring the light and snow is reflecting light back into the atmosphere.
True or False?
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False (we are looking toward the galaxy’s outer edge, not the center.)
This Milky Way is fainter than the glorious band of the Milky Way we see in a Northern Hemisphere summer or Southern Hemisphere winter. That’s because we are looking toward the star-rich center of the galaxy at the opposite side of the year. On these December nights, we are looking toward the galaxy’s outer edge, not the center.
http://earthsky.org/tonight

 

[buildit]

12-17-17 trivia.Tonight, check out one of the flashiest stars in the sky. Every year in northern autumn, we get questions from people in the Northern Hemisphere who see a bright star twinkling with red and green flashes, low in the northeastern sky as seen from Northern Hemisphere locations.
That Star is.......
A. Capella
B. Polaris
C. Betlejuice
D. The international Space Station


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A. Capella
That star is likely Capella, which is actually a golden star. In fact, if you could travel to it in space, you’d find that Capella is actually two golden stars, both with roughly the same surface temperature as our local star, the sun . . . but both larger and brighter than our sun.
http://earthsky.org/tonight/what-star-in-the-northeast-flashes-red-and-green

 

[gumpy]

I have a question for you. I know my granddaughters are going to ask for an explanation on this picture, just because "gumpy knows everything"! Ha! I can't even figure out punctuation.
Anyway, I know that when the temp gets below freezing, water expands and it squeezes out of the soil like a stalk. But since moving to Tennessee I've noticed ice forming in balls vs the stalks. Why this formation?

 

[buildit]

I have a question for you. I know my granddaughters are going to ask for an explanation on this picture, just because "gumpy knows everything"! Ha! I can't even figure out punctuation.
Anyway, I know that when the temp gets below freezing, water expands and it squeezes out of the soil like a stalk. But since moving to Tennessee I've noticed ice forming in balls vs the stalks. Why this formation?

View attachment 2790

Interesting, I've never seen hydraulic forces do either. I assume it is a frost heaving formation produced by water being pushed up out of the soil and then freezing as it reaches the surface. Sort of like caulking expanding out of a caulking gun where it curls and drys into a ball shape.
Is the significant runoff in the soil around you? This might be an important about the land you are putting your house on needing drainage tiling so your foundation doesn't get destroyed by frost heaving and water intrusion.

 

[buildit]

12-19-17 trivia. What is schlieren photography?
A. Color enhancement with trillions of colors
B. They visualize shockwaves from supersonic aircraft
C. Method for using laser light for fine detail photographs
D. Hebrew photographer who took photos of Jesus

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B. They visualize shockwaves from supersonic aircraft
Background Oriented Schlieren using Celestial Objects, or BOSCO, BOSCO validated the use of a special hydrogen alpha filter, and positioned cameras to use the sun as a background, to visualize shockwaves from supersonic aircraft eclipsing the sun 40,000 feet from the camera. Placing the cameras on the ground enabled the use of full-sized telescopes, which were used to maximize the size of the sun image on the camera.
However, LBFD will be flying at higher altitudes around 60,000 feet, and in order for shockwave data to be captured at a high quality, images will need to be taken at closer range, by equipment onboard a chase aircraft. This means the photography equipment will need to be small enough to fit in a small wing pod, but still have the ability to take high-quality images of shockwaves.
The recently-completed second phase of BOSCO flights, or BOSCO II, accomplished just that.
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstr...chlieren_imagery_for_supersonic_aircraft.html