Exploring the Cosmos - Degree Exam 2011 - Particles, Forces & the Big Bang
1. Which assumption leading to Olber's paradox is known to be incorrect?
The universe is eternal.
The universe is infinite in size.
The amount of light reaching us from a star decreases as the inverse square of the distance to the star.
The universe is uniformly filled with stars.
2. Hubble’s Law states that
nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.
the speed at which a galaxy recedes from us is proportional to the distance from us.
the observable universe is finite in size.
the speed at which a galaxy recedes from us is inversely proportional to the distance from us.
3. Which of the following is not true of the Copernican system?
The distance between the sun and the Earth is small compared to the distance to the stars.
The sun is at the centre of the universe.
Mercury and Venus orbit the sun, which in turn orbits the Earth.
Retrograde motion is explained by Earth’s motion around the sun.
4. Which of the following is not true according to the theory of special relativity?
No signal can travel faster than the speed of light.
Objects are contracted in their direction of motion.
Moving clocks run faster than stationary clocks.
Motion with constant velocity is always relative.
5. A proton is comprised of
Two down quarks and an electron.
An electron, a muon, and a neutrino.
Two down quarks and an up quark.
Two up quarks and a down quark.
6. Which type of particle mediates the interaction that is responsible for holding quarks together in hadrons?
Gluon
Photon
Neutrino
Graviton
7. How old was the universe when primordial nucleosynthesis ended?
10^-43 seconds
300 000 years
10^-10 seconds
three minutes
8. Today the cosmic microwave background has a temperature of about
3000 K
3 K
300 K
0.003 K
9. Dark matter (excluding dark energy) is close to what percent of the total mass of the universe?
75 %
100 %
20 %
5 %
10. A possible scenario that can explain the smoothness and flatness problems in the universe is called
CP violation
special relativity
retrograde motion
inflation
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