Cosmology
100: The faint glow left over from the Big Bang, first detected by Penzias and Wilson.
[What is the cosmic microwave background (CMB)?]
The smallest possible discrete packet of light energy.
What is a photon?
The theory that life arose naturally from nonliving matter.
What is abiogenesis?
NASA’s 2024 mission that returned the largest asteroid sample to Earth
[What is OSIRIS-REx?]
Latin phrase often used in science meaning “from nothing.”
[What is ex nihilo?]
This mysterious force is causing the universe's expansion to accelerate.
[What is dark energy?]
Famous thought experiment involving a cat that is both alive and dead.
[What is Schrödinger’s cat?]
These simple cell-like structures can form spontaneously from lipids in water.
[What are protocells?]
This private company’s Starship had a successful orbital test flight in 2025.
[What is SpaceX?]
The paradox about putting infinite guests into an infinite hotel.
[What is Hilbert’s Hotel?]
:The idea that the universe began from an extremely hot, dense point.
[What is the Big Bang theory?]
The principle stating you cannot know both position and momentum exactly.
What is the Heisenberg uncertainty principle?
The famous experiment by Miller and Urey produced these building blocks of life.
[What are amino acids?]
This particle collider near Geneva restarted upgrades to hunt for dark matter candidates.
[What is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)?]
In probability, this TV game show problem shows why switching doors can be better
[What is the Monty Hall problem?]
A region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing—not even light—can escape.
[What is a black hole?]
When particles share a state so that measuring one instantly affects the other, even far apart.
[What is quantum entanglement?]
Hydrothermal ______ on the ocean floor may have provided energy and chemistry for life’s origins.
[What are vents?]
The 2025 total solar eclipse will cross this U.S. state first.
[What is Texas?]
This astronomer famously called Earth “a pale blue dot.”
[Who is Carl Sagan?]
The 2021 space telescope that replaced Hubble for deep-infrared observations.
The 2021 space telescope that replaced Hubble for deep-infrared observations.
The equation at the heart of quantum mechanics that describes wave functions.
[What is the Schrödinger equation?]
The RNA ______ hypothesis suggests early life used this molecule to store info and catalyze reactions.
[What is the RNA world hypothesis?]
This space agency’s LUVOIR-like telescope project was greenlit to search for exoplanet life.
[What is NASA?]
The ancient Greek who proposed atoms as indivisible building blocks of matter.
[Who is Democritus?]