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 uniformly filled with stars.
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.
2. Hubble’s Law states that
the observable universe is finite in size.
the speed at which a galaxy recedes from us is proportional to the distance from us.
the speed at which a galaxy recedes from us is inversely proportional to the distance from us.
nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.
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.
Retrograde motion is explained by Earth’s motion around the sun.
Mercury and Venus orbit the sun, which in turn orbits the Earth.
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.
Motion with constant velocity is always relative.
Moving clocks run faster than stationary clocks.
5. A proton is comprised of
An electron, a muon, and a neutrino.
Two down quarks and an up quark.
Two up quarks and a down quark.
Two down quarks and an electron.
6. Which type of particle mediates the interaction that is responsible for holding quarks together in hadrons?
Graviton
Gluon
Neutrino
Photon
7. How old was the universe when primordial nucleosynthesis ended?
10^-43 seconds
10^-10 seconds
three minutes
300 000 years
8. Today the cosmic microwave background has a temperature of about
0.003 K
3000 K
3 K
300 K
9. Dark matter (excluding dark energy) is close to what percent of the total mass of the universe?
5 %
20 %
75 %
100 %
10. A possible scenario that can explain the smoothness and flatness problems in the universe is called
CP violation
inflation
retrograde motion
special relativity
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