THE SOUTHWORTH PLANETARIUM
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Altitude: 10 feet below sea level
Founded January 1970
Julian Date: 24591132.16
2020-2021: XXVIII
THE DAILY ASTRONOMER
Friday, October 9, 2020
Remote Planetarium 106: Week 23 Astronomy-Mythology Quiz
This week combined Special Relativity with the Local Supercluster and
General Relativity. The quiz takes questions from all the articles
pertaining to the aforementioned and includes some questions from the
mythological prefaces.
As Monday is a holiday, the Remote Planetarium will return on Tuesday with
the next segment in the series pertaining to General Relativity.
*1. During the Hafele-Keating experiment, scientists placed atomic clocks
on _____________ to determine if the moving clocks experienced time
dilation relative to stationary clocks.*
a. trains
b. planes
c. automobiles
d. rockets
*2. One twin flies on a rocketship moving at 90% light speed. Another
remains on Earth. If the flying twin travels to Alpha Centauri and
then returns to Earth, he will be ____________ than his Earth-bound twin.*
a. younger
b. older
c. much heavier
d. much lighter
*3. A _________ is defined as the distance that light travels
in 1/299,792,458th of a second.*
a. foot
b. meter
c. kilometer
d. mile
*4. In order to complete his ninth labor, Heracles was required to
________________.*
a. steal Hippolyta's girdle
b. capture Cerberus
c. clean the Augean Stables
d. slay the Nemean Lion
*5. Who disguised herself as an Amazon in order to turn the other Amazons
against Heracles and Theseus?*
a. Athena
b. Hera
c. Aphrodite
d. Demeter
*6. The Local Group of Galaxies is part of a larger grouping called
the_________________.*
a. M101 Cluster
b. Draco Supercluster
c. Virgo Supercluster
d. Ursa Major Cluster
*7. The Universe consists of approximately ______________ Superclusters*.
a. 100
b. 100,000
c. 750,000
d. 10 million
*8. The supercluster of which the Local Group is a part is described as a
________ supercluster.*
a. poor
b. rich
c. average
d. super abundant.
*9. Theseus' son Hippolytus , being a devotee of __________, was
determined ____________.*
a. Ares; to kill more people than his father
b. Artemis; to remain celibate for his entire life
c. Athena; to gain more wisdom than any mortal
d. Aphrodite; to father 121 children
*10. When Theseus' wife Phaedra told his son Hippolytus that she was in
love with him, how did he react?*
a. he was elated and decided to run away with her
b. he ran away and refused to speak to her
c. he became enraged and reproached Phaedra for her profession of love
d. he transformed himself into a Lion and ate his father so he could marry
Phaedra.
*11. How did Einstein describe gravity in his General Theory of
Relativity?*
a. as a mysterious force mediated between all massive objects
b. as indentations in the space-time fabric caused by the presence of
massive objects
c. as a form of electromagnetism
d. none of the above.
*12. If you double the separation distance between two massive objects,
the magnitude of the gravitational force between them would be reduced to
__________ of its original value.*
a. one half
b. one quarter
c. one eighth
d. one sixteenth
*13. Earth revolves around the Sun because Earth is __________________.*
a. trapped in the Sun's gravity well
b. magnetically attracted to the Sun
c. a massive object
d. none of the above
*14. Who "detached" Scorpius' claws?*
a. Athena
b. Julius Caesar
c. Orion
d. Zeus
*15. What is strange about the names of Libra's stars Zubenelgenubi and
Zubenelschmali?*
a. they are the only two stars whose proper names begin with "z."
b. their names mean "Northern claw" and "Southern claw" even though they
are part of a constellation depicting scales
c. they have the same meaning, but different spellings
d. they were coined in the late 20th century.
*16. A clock on a mountaintop runs more ______ than a clock at sea level.*
a. slowly
b. quickly
c. both
d. neither
*17. The on-board clocks attached to the Global Positioning System
satellites, located about 12,550 miles above Earth's surface, run about
______________ *
*than clocks on Earth.*
a. 35 microseconds more quickly
b. 35 microseconds more slowly
c. 10 minutes more quickly
d. 10 minutes more slowly
*18. What would you see if you watched your friend move toward a black hole
while you were sitting safely on a platform?*
a. your friend would appear to move more slowly toward the black hole and
then would seem to "freeze" before reaching it.
b. your friend would move so quickly you wouldn't even see him at all
c. your friend would be pushed back toward the platform
d. none of the above.
*19. Cronos is the Titan who fathered the gods. Chronos, however, was the
god of __________,*
a. oceans
b. mountains
c. the moon
d. time
*20. Chronos' primary responsibility was to _______________*
a. turn the zodiac wheel
b. collect the souls of the dead
c. preside over births
d. all of the above.
ANSWERS
*1. During the Hafele-Keating experiment, scientists placed atomic clocks
on _____________ to determine if the moving clocks experienced time
dilation relative to stationary clocks.*
b. planes
In 1971, an atomic clock was placed on an airplane that flew eastward and
another on a plane that flew westward to measure both kinematic time
dilation and gravitational time dilation.
*2. One twin flies on a rocketship moving at 90% light speed. Another
remains on Earth. If the flying twin travels to Alpha Centauri and
then returns to Earth, he will be ____________ than his Earth-bound twin.*
a. younger
A traveler moving at such a high velocity will experience less time than a
"stationary" observer. (Being on a revolving and rotating planet, the Earth
bound twin will not be truly stationary.) The rocket traveler will
actually be younger than his twin.
*3. A _________ is defined as the distance that light travels
in 1/299,792,458th of a second.*
b. meter
Light moving through a vacuum travels at 299,792,458 meters per second. In
1983 the 17th Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures (General Conference
on Weights and Measures) defined the meter as the distance light travels in
1/299,792,458th of a second.
*4. In order to complete his ninth labor, Heracles was required to
________________.*
a. steal Hippolyta's girdle
Heracles traveled to the Amazonian region around the Thermodon River in
order to steal the girdle from their queen Hippolyta. Knowing that the
task would prove quite challenging, he asked Theseus to accompany him.
*5. Who disguised herself as an Amazon in order to turn the other Amazons
against Heracles and Theseus?*
b. Hera
Heracles' arch nemesis disguised herself as an Amazon to convince the
Amazons that Heracles and Theseus intended to kidnap their queen. The
Amazons launched an assault on the two warriors, both of whom managed to
escape in the company of their queen Hippolyta.
*6. The Local Group of Galaxies is part of a larger grouping called
the_________________.*
c. Virgo Supercluster
The Local Group, consisting of at least 80 galaxies, is just a part of the
Virgo Supercluster that consists of more than 100 galaxy groups distributed
over a region 110 million light years in diameter.
*7. The Universe consists of approximately ______________ Superclusters*.
d. 10 million
Unfathomable! The Milky Way is part of the Local Group of Galaxies which,
itself, is part of the Virgo Supercluster. That enormous collection of
galaxy groups is just one of ten million such superclusters.
*8. The supercluster of which the Local Group is a part is described as a
________ supercluster.*
a. poor
Despite the thousands of galaxies located within it, the Virgo Supercluster
is considered a "poor" cluster because of its lack of a dense central
region.
*9. Theseus' son Hippolytus , being a devotee of __________, was
determined ____________.*
b. Artemis; to remain celibate for his entire life
While most of Artemis' virginal followers were female, Hippolytus was also
a celibate devotee of the moon goddess. Although he came to a tragic
end, Hippolytus was chaste throughout his life.
*10. When Theseus' wife Phaedra told his son Hippolytus that she was in
love with him, how did he react?*
c. he became enraged and reproached Phaedra for her profession of love
Hippolytus didn't react well to Phaedra's letter in which she expressed her
deep love for him. He went to her room and castigated her for harboring
such feelings for her own husband's son. Phaedra was so devastated by
this rebuke that she wrote a note falsely accusing Hippolytus of rape
before hanging herself.
*11. How did Einstein describe gravity in his General Theory of
Relativity?*
b. as indentations in the space-time fabric caused by the presence of
massive objects
Whereas Newton described gravity as a force exerted between massive
objects, Einstein's General Theory of Relativity modeled gravity as
indentations of the space-time continuum caused by the presence of massive
objects.
*12. If you double the separation distance between two massive objects,
the magnitude of the gravitational force between them would be reduced to
__________ of its original value.*
b. one quarter
Gravity diminishes with the square of the distance, so if the separation
distance is doubled, the magnitude of the gravitational force is reduced to
one quarter (1/4) of its original value.
*13. Earth revolves around the Sun because Earth is __________________.*
a. trapped in the Sun's gravity well
Earth and the other bodies in the solar system are close enough to the Sun
to be trapped in its gravity well. All the bodies revolve around the
Sun due their close proximity to it.
*14. Who "detached" Scorpius' claws?*
b. Julius Caesar
As part of his calendar reform, Roman dictator Julius Caesar detached
Scorpius' claws and transformed them into the constellation Libra in order
for the zodiac to have twelve signs, equal to the number of months.
*15. What is strange about the names of Libra's stars Zubenelgenubi and
Zubenelschmali?*
b. their names mean "Northern claw" and "Southern claw" even though they
are part of a constellation depicting scales.
These stars were named when they were considered part of Scorpius the
Scorpion, hence the "Northern Claw" (Zubenelschmali) and "Southern Claw"
(Zubenelgenubi).
[Some other stars have names beginning with z, such as Zaniah (in Virgo),
Zaurak (in Eridanus) and Zosma (in Leo), to cite a few examples.)
*16. A clock on a mountaintop runs more ______ than a clock at sea level.*
b. quickly
Granted, the difference is slight. However, a clock in a region of higher
gravitational potential runs more slowly than one farther away.
*17. The on-board clocks attached to the Global Positioning System
satellites, located about 12,550 miles above Earth's surface, run about
______________ *
*than clocks on Earth.*
a. 35 microseconds more quickly
As they are at a much higher altitude than Earth-based clocks, the GPS
clocks run about 35 microseconds (35 millionths of a second) more quickly
than Earth-bound clocks, which are located in a region of higher
gravitational potential
*18. What would you see if you watched your friend move toward a black hole
while you were sitting safely on a platform?*
a. your friend would appear to move more slowly toward the black hole and
then would seem to "freeze" before reaching it.
Due to gravitational time dilation, your friend would appear to move more
slowly before stopping altogether just before reaching the black hole.
From the friend's perspective, however, he/she would be moving quite
rapidly.
*19. Cronos is the Titan who fathered the gods. Chronos, however, was the
god of __________,*
d. time
Chronos was the progenitor of Chaos, Aether and the Egg from which all
beings were born. He was the primordial god of time who predated Cronos
by two generations.
*20. Chronos' primary responsibility was to _______________*
a. turn the zodiac wheel
While he delegated many other responsibilities to other gods, Chronos still
turned the Zodiac Wheel, which contained the twelve constellations through
which the Sun travels each year.
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