PARTICLE PARTY
Every atom is built from these three particles.
What are protons, neutrons, and electrons?
Far beyond all the planets, this giant shell of icy objects surrounds our solar system and is thought to be where long-period comets come from.
What is the Oort cloud?
Borrowed from a bacteria's immune system, this gene-editing tool won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
What is CRISPR?
Captain America's shield is made of this rare metal from Wakanda.
What is vibranium?
AI models are built from layers of connected "neurons," loosely copied from the human brain. This is the name for that setup.
What is a neural network?
Nicknamed "the God particle," this was discovered at CERN's Large Hadron
What is the Higgs boson?
The James Webb Space Telescope is parked about 1 million miles from Earth, on the far side of Earth from the Sun, at this spot.
What is L2 (the second Lagrange point)?
Absolute zero, the coldest temperature possible, is exactly 0 on this temperature scale.
What is Kelvin?
After the Battle of New York, Tony Stark talks the Avengers into trying this food.
What is shawarma?
Many self-driving cars use this laser sensor to build a 3D map of everything around them.
What is LIDAR?
This is the antimatter twin of the electron. It's the same in every way, except its charge is positive.
What is a positron?
In 1966, a thruster stuck "on" sent Gemini 8 tumbling almost once per second. This astronaut regained control and saved the mission, three years before an even bigger first.
Who is Neil Armstrong?
These tiny eight-legged "water bears" can survive freezing, huge doses of radiation, and even the vacuum of space.
What are tardigrades?
In Interstellar, the crew's blocky robot with an adjustable humor setting is named this.
Who is TARS?
Robot arms use this type of motor because it can turn to an exact angle and hold it there.
What is a servo?
Name all six types of quarks.
What are up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom?
A huge cluster of galaxies can bend the light from galaxies far behind it, stretching them into curved arcs or even full circles. This effect is called this.
What is gravitational lensing
Only two elements are liquid at room temperature. Name both.
What are mercury and bromine?
To distract the villain Ronan at the end of Guardians of the Galaxy, Star-Lord challenges him to this.
What is a dance-off?
Robots use this sensor to measure how fast they're turning, and your phone has a tiny one too.
What is a gyroscope?
An atom of einsteinium-254 with a +2 charge contains this many charm quarks
What is zero?
Starting in 1959, the Mercury astronauts trained in this three-cage machine in Cleveland, which spun them on three axes at once so they could practice stopping a tumbling spacecraft.
What is the MASTIF (Multiple Axis Space Test Inertia Facility)? (accept "gimbal rig")
Einstein called this link between two quantum particles "spooky action at a distance."
What is quantum entanglement?
In Avengers: Endgame, Captain America walks off with Loki's scepter just by whispering these two words in an elevator.
What is "Hail Hydra"?
This famous rule says the number of transistors on a computer chip doubles about every two years.
What is Moore's law?