Almost Daily Trivia Quiz #106 - Outer Space Trivia - Neutron Star, Universe, parsec, cosmic rays, Jupiter, spacetime and more.

 

Space facts trivia questions - Scroll down for answers.

1. How old is the universe?
    
2. What is a black hole?
    
3. How far is the nearest black hole?
    
4. What is a supernova?
    
5. What is a quasar?
    
6. What is a neutron star?
    
7. What is a brown dwarf?
    
8. What is a red giant?
    
9. How hot is the sun?
    
10. What is a solar flare?
     
11. What are cosmic rays?
     
12. What is the Van Allen belt?
     
13. What is the most common element found in the universe?
     
14. What is Jupiter made of?
     
15. How many moons does Jupiter have?
     
16. How long is a day on Mercury?
     
17. How many stars are there in in the big dipper?
     
18. How many stars are in the little dipper?
     
19. What is a constellation?
     
20. How many named constellations are there? 
     
21. What is the big red spot on Jupiter?
     
22. Where is the element gold come from?
     
23. What is a parsec?
     

Answers to Daily Trivia Quiz # 106 - Outer Space

1. In a study published  in the journal Science, a team of researchers says the universe is between 11.2 billion and 20 billion years old.
    
2. A black hole is a region of spacetime from which nothing can escape, even light.
    
3. As of now the closest known one is thought to lie at about 1,600 light years from Earth.
    
4. A supernova is a stellar explosion which produces an extremely bright object made of plasma that declines to invisibility over weeks or months. 
    
5. The scientific consensus is that quasars are powered by material falling into super massive black holes in the nuclei of distant galaxies.
    
6. Neutron stars are the collapsed cores of some massive stars.
    
7. Brown dwarfs are sub-stellar objects with a mass below that necessary to maintain hydrogen-burning nuclear fusion reactions in their cores.
    
8. They are stars of 0.4 - 10 times the mass of the Sun which have exhausted their supply of hydrogen in their cores and switched to fusing hydrogen in a shell outside the core. 
    
9. The core of the Sun is 27,000,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The surface of the Sun, is only 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
    
10. A solar flare is an explosion on the Sun that happens when energy stored in twisted magnetic fields is suddenly released.
     
11. Cosmic rays are high energy charged particles, originating in outer space, that travel at nearly the speed of light and strike the Earth from all directions.
     
12. The Van Allen Radiation Belt is a torus of energetic charged particles (plasma) around Earth, trapped by Earth's magnetic field.
     
13. Hydrogen
     
14. Jupiter is about 90% hydrogen and 10% helium (by numbers of atoms, 75/25% by mass) with traces of methane, water, ammonia and "rock"
     
15. Jupiter has 63 known satellites (as of Feb 2004): the four large Galilean moons plus many more small ones some of which have not yet been named.
     
16. Mercury rotates three times in two of its years.
     
17. The Big Dipper is a group of seven bright stars, 3 which form a handle and 4 which form a bowl.
     
18. The little dipper has 6 stars.
     
19. A constellation is a group of stars that, when seen from Earth, form a pattern. 
     
20. There are 88 constellations. 
     
21. A:  The Great Red Spot on Jupiter is a hurricane-like storm system. It is large enough that two Earths could fit across it. 
     
22. Gold only comes from Super Novae. 
     
23. The parsec is a unit of length used in astronomy, approximately equal to 3.261 light years.