ASTRONOMY CSCC EXAM 1 Questions And Answers Rated A+

A chemoautotroph gets its energy from - chemical reactions and its carbon from its environment Abnormal forms of protein molecules called prions have one of the characteristics of living things in that they - actively respond to external changes According to Kepler's Second Law of planetary motion, a planet moves fastest in its orbit when it is - at perihelion According to the nebular theory for the formation of the solar system - planets should be rotating in the same direction as they orbit the Sun All organisms have finite lifetimes and eventually die. Which of the basic characteristics of life corrects for this? - reproduction Amino acids found in protein in life on Earth are - all left-handed molecules Among the other planets, probably the most likely place to find evidence for life either now or in the past is on - Mars Apparent retrograde motion occurs when a planet appears to - move westward with respect to background stars Astrobiology as a field of scientific research, includes contributions from - many different scientific disciplines Astronomy has shown us that the fundamental laws of physics are - the same everywhere in the universeBeneath the surface of which moon of Saturn is there evidence for the existence of a subsurface ocean of liquid water? - Enceladus Compared to the Sun, older stars contain what proportion of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium? - a lower proportion Extraterrestrial life is defined to be - any kind of life found beyond the Earth For most of human history it was believed that the Earth was at the center of the universe. This idea is referred to as - geocentric How are the "geological record" and the "fossil record" related? - the fossil record is part of the geological record Humanity has been thinking about the possibility of extraterrestrial life - throughout human history since the time of the ancient Greeks If the temperature of the Earth warms up how does the carbon dioxide cycle respond? - it speeds up the formation of carbonate minerals in the oceans, thus pulling more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere If we compress the entire history of the into one year, each day represents - a few tens of millions of years In order to have a global magnetic field, a planet must have - an electrically conducting fluid in its interior which is undergoing convection and a reasonably rapid rotation In radioactive decay, the original nucleus before decay is referred to as the - parent isotopeIn the context of life in the universe, which of the following discoveries of astronomy suggests that enormous numbers of habitable worlds may exist in the universe? - the building blocks of life are common In the heliocentric (Sun-centered) model, apparent retrograde motion is due to - relative motion between the Earth and another planet in its orbit In the process of nuclear fusion - two or more nuclei fuse or stick together to form a heavier nucleus whose combined mass is slightly less than the original nucleus Most of the mass of the universe is in the form of - dark matter Most of the oxygen in living cells is found in - water Newton's 3rd Law of Motion states that - action and reaction are equal and opposite Once oxygen started to be manufactured by cyanobacteria, why did it take so long to build up to significant levels? - oxidation of surface rock and ocean minerals occurred One fundamental consequence of the Copernican model which many people had difficulty accepting at the time it was proposed was that the Earth - must be moving through space Organisms close to each other on the "Tree of Life" - are genetically very similar The amount of geological activity occurring on a terrestrial planet is related - to its size and the amount of internal-radioactive heating The ancient view of an Earth-centered geocentric universe suggested that life elsewhere should be - rare The Cambrian Explosion began approximately - 542 million years agoThe discovery of any kind of life beyond the Earth would - cause a profound change in perspective of the whole of humanity The Earth owes its habitability primarily to - a combination of its size and its distance from the Sun The first life to originate on Earth must be - at least as old as the oldest fossils The first person to introduce the concept of evolution was the - Greek scientist Anaximander The geocentric model of the Greeks consisted of a - spherical Earth at the center of the universe surrounded by a celestial sphere The greenhouse effect is the - trapping of infrared radiation from the Earth's surface by greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, methane, and water The main chemical building blocks of life, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and iron were formed - in the nuclear burning cores of stars and then ejected into space when they died The modern view of our place in the universe suggests that life elsewhere may be - common The Moon, Mercury, and Mars do not have plate tectonics because - they have cooled so rapidly that they do not have enough internal convection to break up their thick crusts The point in time at which oxygen started to build up in the Earth's atmosphere is referred to as the - great oxidation event The point in time when the expansion of the universe began is referred to the - big bang