Question

1. The width of the Milky Way is approximately how large?

a. 12 parsecs

b. 100,000 light years

c. 10,000 light years

d. 1 million light years

2. The recession of almost all other galaxies away from the Milky Way was first mathematically described by:

a. Theory of Special Relativity

b. 2nd Law of Thermodynamics

c. Hubble's Law

d. Kepler's Third Law

3. Which of the following is NOT an active galaxy type?

a. radio

b. Seyfert

c. quasar

d. glitch

4. Cosmic Microwave Background radiation is leftover from the time of the universe in which

a. quarks formed

b. only Planck time existed

c. electrons and protons first formed atoms

d. proto-galaxies formed

5. The tremendous expansion of the universe by many orders of magnitude in size at a very young age (10^-35s old) is referred to as:

a. primordial growth

b. initial explosion

c. inflation

d. embiggening

6. If we observed the Sun today and compared it to observations from five years ago, why would we see a difference in sunspot activity?

Answer 1

1.b.100,000 light years.

The Milky Way is about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 km (about 100,000 light years or about 30 kpc) across.

2.c.Hubble's law

Edwin Hubble proved that there is a direct relationship between the speeds of distant galaxies and their distances from Earth. This is now known as Hubble's Law.

3.d. glitch

Radio, quazars and Seyfert are active type galaxies.

4.c. electrons and protons first formed atoms.

5.c.Inflation

During the inflationary epoch, the universe suddenly expanded, and its volume increased by a factor of at least .

6. Sunspot changes over time. This happens beacuse of the change in the orientation of sun's magnetic field.

Each time the sunspot count rises and falls, the magnetic field of the Sun associated with sunspots reverses polarity; the orientation of magnetic fields in the Sun's northern and southern hemispheres switch.