Solar System
The hottest planet in our solar system.
What is Venus?
The closest star to Earth?
What is the Sun?
This 1977 film began with the word “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”
What is Star Wars?
The first person in space.
Who is Yuri Gagari?
This invisible matter makes up most of the mass in galaxies.
What is dark matter?
This moon has lakes and rivers of liquid methane.
What is Titan?
The Milky Way is classified as this type of galaxy.
What is a barred spiral galaxy?
In this 1968 film, HAL 9000 says, “I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
What is 2001: A Space Odyssey?
The rover currently exploring Mars since 2021.
What is Perseverance?
This mysterious force is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate.
What is dark energy?
The dwarf planet in the asteroid belt has a temporary atmosphere.
What is Ceres?
The hottest stars on the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram are this spectral type.
What is O-type?
The Martian, Mark Watney grows potatoes using Martian soil. To make it work, he had to add this crucial ingredient to the regolith.
What is water? Or What is fertilizer from human waste?
Sputnik 1 was launched by the Soviet Union in this year.
What is 1957?
The Schwarzschild radius of a black hole is proportional to this property of the black hole.
What is its mass?
Jupiter has the shortest day of all planets, rotating once every about ___ hours.
What is ~10 hours?
The remnant left behind after a supernova if the core collapses completely.
What is a black hole?
In Interstellar, the planet near Gargantua experienced 7 years passing on Earth for every 1 hour on the surface. This is due to what relativistic effect?
What is time dilation caused by gravity?
Voyager 1 crossed the heliopause, the boundary of the Sun’s influence, this year.
What is 2012?
The cosmic microwave background has an average temperature of about ___ Kelvin.
What is 2.7 K?
Uranus rotates on its side, but its magnetic field is also unusual. It’s tilted by about ___ degrees from its rotational axis.
What is ~60 degrees?
The maximum mass a neutron star can have before collapsing into a black hole is called this limit.
What is the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff (TOV) limit?
The starship Enterprise from Star Trek uses this fictional propulsion system, inspired by the real physics idea of bending space.
What is a warp drive?
This probe was the first successful soft landing on Mars by the Soviet Union in 1971.
What is Mars 3?
This paradox asks why the night sky is dark despite infinite stars.
What is Olbers' paradox?