1. Name the facility being built at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, that may be able to detect or produce dark matter in the laboratory. ?
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), scheduled for start-up in mid-2008, will become the largest particle accelerator in the world. It is being built in an underground circular tunnel that is 27 kilometers (16.7 miles) in circumference.
2. Dark matter helps to explain certain aspects of the Big Bang, which occurred when the universe began and then expanded. When did the Big Bang happen?
About 13.7 billion years ago.
3. Since dark matter does not absorb or emit light, it is invisible to current optical instruments. However, with a large enough radio telescope, astronomers could create a map of the universe detailing the structure and distribution of this invisible dark matter. At present, what is the largest single-aperture radio telescope on Earth?
The Arecibo Observatory Radio Telescope, located near the town of Arecibo in Puerto Rico, is the largest curved focusing antenna on the planet, making it the world's most sensitive radio telescope. The reflecting dish surface, or radio mirror, is 305 m (1000 ft) in diameter.
4. Who is the astronomer whose studies and calculations of gravitational fields and "missing" masses in the 1930s eventually led to the postulation of dark matter?
Fritz Zwicky (1898-1974), whose innovative work was done at the California Institute of Technology.
5. Dark Matter is the title of a new film by opera director Chen Shi-Zheng based on the struggles of a Chinese cosmological student seeking to unravel the mysteries of dark matter. Name either the Chinese-born lead actor who plays the student or the American-born actress also starring in this film.
Actor Liu Ye plays the lead role, while Meryl Streep is the notable American-born actress.
6. Black holes (the remnants after heavy stars burn out and collapse) have been proposed as a possible candidate for dark matter since the gravitational pull of a black hole is so strong that not even light can escape. Who is the theoretical physicist who coined the term "black hole": Isaac Newton, Stephen Hawking, Richard Feynman, John A. Wheeler, or Albert Einstein?
John A. Wheeler (1911-2008) of Princeton University coined the term in December 1967 at his public lecture, "Our Universe: the Known and Unknown".
7. Cosmology, the study of the structure and the origin of the universe, is derived from two Greek words: "cosmos", meaning order, and "logos", meaning reason or plan. The mythological Greek god Zeus was the ruler of the universe. Who were his parents?
Kronos and Rhea.
8. Dark matter helps to explain the rotational motion of the Milky Way Galaxy (the large disk-shaped aggregation of stars, gas, and dust in which our solar system is located). Approximately how many stars are in the Milky Way Galaxy: 2, 2000, 2 million, 200 billion, or 200 trillion?
About 200 billion.
9. Two classic rock groups that formed in the 1960s have recorded different songs with the same title of "Dark Star". Which are the two: Pink Floyd; Crosby, Stills, and Nash; Creedence Clearwater Revival; The Grateful Dead; or Led Zeppelin?
The Grateful Dead in 1968 and Crosby, Stills, and Nash in 1977. [In the context of "dark matter", "dark star" is a recent speculative term; it is used to describe the earliest type of stars in the universe that may have been created out of dark matter via neutralino annihilation.]
10. True or false: The rings around the planet Saturn are actually dark matter.
False. The rings around Saturn are composed of billions of particles of ice and rock, which are "ordinary matter", not dark matter.
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