Miscellaneous
Pulsars and magnetars are both ____ stars.
Pulsars and magnetars are both NEUTRON stars.
____ classes are used to identify stars by temperature
SPECTRAL classes are used to identify stars by temperature
apparent/observed brightness
Electron degeneracy pressure?
Property of tightly packed electrons that keeps white dwarfs from collapsing into neutron stars or black holes until they pass a certain mass limit
How would the universe end if dark energy kept increasing?
The Big Rip: Universe would be torn apart into its most basic parts as space expands faster than light
Explanation: Dark energy causes universe's expansion, so increasing it would make the universe expand very fast
What is gravity according to general relativity?
Gravity is effects of spacetime curving due to mass
____ plots stars using their luminosity and temperature
Hertzsprung-Russel (HR) Diagram
What is luminosity?
Actual/intrinsic brightness
Neutron degeneracy pressure?
Property of tightly packed neutrons that keeps neutron stars from collapsing into black holes until they pass a certain mass limit
How would the universe end if matter succumbed to entropy (tendency of matter to spread out)?
The Big Freeze: Universe's matter would spread out to a completely inert state, and cause the heat death of the universe
One possible shape of images produced by strong gravitational lensing
Einstein ring, Einstein cross, Arcs/arclets
Astronomers hate using this system to assess star brightness
Star magnitude system
Explanation: It gives higher numbers for dimmer stars, lower or even negative numbers for brighter stars, ughhh
What type of theoretical object produces a continuous spectrum of light as it completely absorbs all wavelengths of light?
Blackbody
Chandrasekhar limit?
Mass limit past which white dwarf collapses into neutron star (1.44 solar masses)
What are the Big Crunch & Big Bounce theories?
Big Crunch: The universe will stop expanding at some point in time & switcheroo to contracting, collapsing into the biggest black hole ever
Big Bounce: The universe exists in a cycle of Big Bangs & Big Crunches
What violates general relativity?
Quantum physics like hawking radiation
What is the electromagnetic spectrum?
It's the entire range of light in the universe, including visible and not visible light.
What are the 2 types of spectral lines?
Absorption lines & emission lines
Stupidly named telescopes
Very Large Telescope, Very Large Array, Very Long Baseline Array
What is the Big Slurp theory?
The universe is a "false vacuum" with a small amount of energy making it seem stable. If a bubble of "true vacuum" comes into existence, it'll slurp up the whole universe and flip the laws of physics.
How many ways did elements in the universe form? (Name a few for brownie points~)
4: Era of Nucleosynthesis shortly after the Big Bang, nuclear fusion in stars, supernova nucleosynthesis, & cosmic rays
Why are all the galaxies we see redshifted (light moving towards red side of electromagnetic spectrum with longer wavelengths)?
Galaxies are redshifted because they are moving away from us due to the universe's expansion
What is the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)?
CMB is the old remnants of light from after Big Bang when universe cooled down enough to go from opaque to transparent
Biggest black hole (we can Hangman the name)
TON 618
How is the universe most likely to end?
The Big Freeze: Matter spread out evenly and energy dies out; Heat death of the universe