Science & Space Quiz

Internal GPS

O'Keefe found neurons firing at specific locations and the Mosers found others firing in a hexagonal grid; together they form a positioning system in the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex.

True

The Veggie growth facility produced 'Outredgeous' red romaine, tasted by the crew in August 2015 after an earlier crop had been sent back to Earth for safety testing.

True

Article II bars national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, use or occupation. It says considerably less about private companies extracting resources, which is where the argument sits today.

Ultra-cool Dwarf

The star is barely bigger than Jupiter and far cooler than the Sun, so its habitable zone lies very close in — which is how seven Earth-sized planets fit into orbits of a few days.

Cyanobacteria

Cyanobacteria were the first organisms to run oxygenic photosynthesis, and the oxygen they released was toxic to most existing anaerobic life — arguably the first mass extinction.

True

In a 2007 orbital experiment tardigrades dehydrated into a dormant tun state were exposed to open space, and some survived vacuum and solar radiation to revive and reproduce.

True

Convecting molten iron, stirred by the planet's rotation, sustains the field by dynamo action — which is why the magnetic poles wander and have reversed many times.

False

Venus does spin retrograde, but it is not alone: Uranus is tilted about 98 degrees and is likewise counted as rotating backwards, so the word 'only' is what makes this false.

True

Bacteria file fragments of viral DNA in CRISPR arrays and use Cas enzymes to cut any matching sequence on reinfection; Doudna and Charpentier repurposed that machinery for editing.

True

Built from standard 10 cm cube units, they ride up with cargo and are pushed out through deployers such as the Japanese module's airlock, giving small teams an affordable route to orbit.

False

Jerry Ehman circled a 72-second narrowband burst on a printout, but despite repeated searches it has never recurred — and without a repeat it cannot be confirmed as anything at all.

Thermal Recoil Force

Detailed thermal modelling showed heat radiating unevenly from the spacecraft produced a minute push back towards the Sun, removing any need for new physics.

New Physics

The muon's magnetic moment can be predicted to extraordinary precision, so a persistent gap between measurement and theory would point to particles or forces missing from the Standard Model.

Leidenfrost Effect

Above a threshold temperature the underside of the drop flashes to vapour faster than the drop can boil away, and that insulating layer lets it skate around and survive far longer.

Silica Aerogel

Silica aerogel is over 99% air, and the Stardust mission used it to catch comet particles at hypervelocity, slowing them gradually instead of vaporising them on impact.

Buckminsterfullerene

The 60-carbon cage was named after Buckminster Fuller, whose geodesic domes it resembles, and the discovery earned the trio the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

IC 2497

Hanny van Arkel spotted the green cloud while volunteering on Galaxy Zoo. It still glows from radiation of a quasar in IC 2497 that has since shut down — a light echo tens of thousands of years old.

L2

At L2 the Sun, Earth and Moon stay on the same side, so a single sunshield keeps the instruments near 40 K — cold enough for the infrared observations Webb was built for.

Gravitational time dilation

Weaker gravity at orbital altitude runs the clocks about 45 microseconds a day fast while orbital speed slows them by 7; receivers correct for the 38 that remain, or positions would drift kilometres.

DNA polymerases for PCR

Heat-stable polymerases such as Taq and Pfu, drawn from organisms that live near boiling water, survive the repeated thermal cycling PCR depends on — the foundation of modern DNA testing.

Mycelium composites

NASA's mycotecture research grows fungal mycelium into structural panels; the hydrogen-rich organic material absorbs radiation well and could be cultivated on arrival rather than launched.

Mariner 10

Mariner 10's 1974 pass by Venus bent its path towards Mercury using the planet's gravity rather than fuel, proving a technique now standard for reaching the outer solar system.

Breakthrough Starshot

Breakthrough Starshot, announced in 2016, proposes pushing gram-scale probes on light sails with a ground-based laser array to around a fifth of light speed. It is privately funded, not a NASA programme.