🎯 Test Your Knowledge!

1. The Schwarzschild radius depends directly on:

2. In 2025, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope helped confirm which record-breaking cosmic structure?

3. Which astronomical observation first confirmed the accelerating expansion of the Universe?

4. What does the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) represent?

5. What theory describes the origin and evolution of the universe from a hot, dense state, leading to its current expansion?

6. Which private space company recently proposed a theoretical plan for a nuclear fusion-powered interstellar probe by the 2040s?

7. What is the primary process that powers the Sun and other main-sequence stars, releasing vast amounts of energy?

8. What fundamental force is most responsible for pulling together clouds of gas and dust to form new stars and planets?

9. What’s a key reason astrophysicists are focusing on M-dwarf stars in the search for habitable exoplanets?

10. What powerful event happens when a very massive star reaches the end of its life and explodes brightly?

11. How do scientists primarily figure out what distant stars and galaxies are made of, like their chemical elements?

12. What does the redshift (z) value of a galaxy measure?

13. If a light-year measures the distance light travels in one Earth year, what does this tell you about looking at a galaxy 10 million light-years away?

14. Which theory unifies the fundamental forces at extremely high energies?

15. Astronomers discover a planet outside our solar system that orbits another star. What is the scientific term for such a planet?

16. You observe two stars. Star A appears blue-white, while Star B appears orange-red. What can you infer about their relative surface temperatures?

17. Around a black hole, what is the 'point of no return' called, where nothing, not even light, can escape?

18. Astronomers detect regular pulses of radio waves coming from a very dense, rapidly spinning remnant of a massive star. What type of object have they most likely discovered?

19. What is the observable limit of the Universe defined by?

20. What primarily causes the bending of light near a massive object according to General Relativity?

21. What is the term for the vast collection of stars, gas, dust, and dark matter held together by gravity that forms the fundamental unit of the universe?

22. Dark energy is hypothesized to be responsible for:

23. A region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape is known as a:

24. Which type of galaxy is characterized by a central bulge and flat rotating disk with spiral arms containing young stars and gas?

25. In a neutron star, what prevents further collapse into a black hole?

26. When light from a distant galaxy appears shifted towards the red end of the color spectrum, what does this “redshift” tell scientists about that galaxy's movement?

27. Which component makes up the largest percentage of the universe's total mass-energy content, though it cannot be directly observed?