Physics-y Fiction
Astrophysics
Physics Physics
Physics-Adjacent History
Not Physics
100
In the original films, this practice awakened Godzilla from its prehistoric slumber.
What is nuclear weapons testing?
100
The Milky Way galaxy may collide with this galaxy in 4.5 billion years.
What is the Andromeda Galaxy?
100
Antimatter falls in this direction.
What is down? :) (What is in the same direction as gravity?)
100
Inspired by an offhand comment from Peter Debye that if all matter behaves as a wave, this wave should follow a wave equation, this physicist came up with a fundamental equation in quantum mechanics.
Who is Erwin Schrodinger?
100
This sea creature has bright blue blood that is invaluable for making vaccines. Despite it's name, it is closely related to spiders.
What is the horseshoe crab?
200
In Project Hail Mary, Dr. Ryland Grace and Rocky discover and use this to wipe out the interstellar bacteria destroying their home worlds.
What is a Taumoeba?
200
This type of supernova remnant is more dense than a white dwarf, but less dense than a black hole.
What is a neutron star?
200
About 100 trillion of these particles go through your body every second, yet there's only a 25% chance that a single one of them interacts with your body in your entire lifetime.
What is a neutrino?
200
Sir Isaac Newton and this mathematician are typically credited for creating modern calculus.
Who is Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz?
200
This is the largest cat that can meow.
What is a panther/puma/cougar?
300
This is the name for the analog for Earth in Kerbal Space Program's fictional solar system.
What is Kerbin?
300
After diving close to the Sun in 2024, this space probe became the fastest object ever built on Earth.
What is the Parker Solar Probe?
300
This is the name of stable points in space that occur when the gravitational forces of two orbiting bodies and the centrifugal force all cancel out.
What is a Lagrange point?
300
The Hindenburg disaster occurred when a blimp full of this gas exploded over the skies of New Jersey.
What is Hydrogen?
300
This residential college is famous for (formerly) having the sculpture Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks
What is Morse College?
400
This Nobel Prize winning astrophysicist was one of the main scientific consultants for Interstellar, and (flex alert) Yale SPS had him give a talk this past fall semester.
Who is Kip Thorne?
400
This is the only body in the solar system aside from Earth with clear evidence of stable surface bodies of water.
What is Titan?
400
This type of experimental fusion reactor does NOT boil water to generate electricity.
What is a Tokamak?
400
She proved that symmetries in a physical system imply conserved quantities.
Who is Emmy Noether?
400
This swedish singer will be headlining at Spring Fling this Saturday.
Who is Zara Larsson?
500
This is the name of the main protagonists' spaceship in The Expanse.
What is the Rocinante?
500
This is the heaviest element that massive stars can fuse their fuel into before collapsing due to their own weight.
What is iron?
500
This effect makes nonrotating objects moving at relativistic speeds appear to be rotating to a stationary observer.
What is the Terrell effect? / What is Terrel rotation?
500
The maximum mass of a white dwarf star and a space X-ray observatory were both named after this astrophysicist.
Who is Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar?
500
The name of this character (spell it out): Ѯ
What is "ksi"?