Ten questions on the universe past our own planets, and the missions that went looking, each with the reasoning behind it.
The Solar System is only the immediate neighbourhood, and the interesting questions start once you leave it. This quiz covers stars and what they are made of, the scale of cosmic distance and the units invented to cope with it, galaxies, black holes and the milestones of human spaceflight. It deliberately leaves the planets themselves to The Solar System, Explained, so the two sit alongside each other rather than repeating. The explanations tie each answer to the physics that produces it.
Every question in this quiz is listed below with its correct answer and the reasoning behind it. Play first if you would rather not see the answers — or read through as a study sheet.
Play it insteadAnswer: B. The Milky Way
Why: The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy holding hundreds of billions of stars. The band visible in a dark sky is our view along its disc from inside.
Answer: A. Distance
Why: It is the distance light travels in one year, roughly 9.5 trillion kilometres. The name misleads almost everyone on first encounter.
Answer: C. Gravity
Why: The Sun's gravity continually bends each planet's path into a closed orbit. Without it they would travel in straight lines out of the system.
Answer: D. Yuri Gagarin
Why: Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin orbited Earth once aboard Vostok 1 in April 1961. The flight lasted under two hours.
Answer: C. Hydrogen and helium
Why: Stars are mostly hydrogen fusing into helium, which is what releases their energy. Heavier elements are produced later in a star's life or in its death.
Answer: B. A region whose gravity is strong enough to prevent light escaping
Why: Enough mass compressed into a small enough volume creates an escape velocity above the speed of light. The boundary beyond which nothing returns is the event horizon.
Answer: A. The explosive death of a massive star
Why: When a massive star exhausts its fuel it collapses and rebounds in an enormous explosion. These events forge and scatter most elements heavier than iron.
Answer: C. Hubble
Why: Hubble observes from above the atmosphere, avoiding the blurring that limits ground telescopes. Its primary mirror was flawed at launch and corrected by a servicing mission in 1993.
Answer: D. Apollo 11
Why: Apollo 11 landed in July 1969 with Armstrong and Aldrin. Apollo 8 had orbited the Moon months earlier without landing.
Answer: C. A star
Why: The Sun is an average main-sequence star, unremarkable except for its closeness. It contains over 99 per cent of the Solar System's mass.
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