AST Ch 9 – Flashcards
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a meteorite
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A rock found on Earth that crashed down from space is called _________.
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being a fragment from Comet Halley
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Among discovered meteorites, we have found some with all the following origins EXCEPT _________.
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Objects in the asteroid belt and Kuiper belt orbit the Sun in nearly the same plane as the planets, but objects in the Oort cloud do not
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Which of the following statements about asteroids, Kuiper belt objects, and Oort cloud objects is true?
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the coma
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When a comet passes near the Sun, part of it takes on the appearance of a large, bright ball from which the tail extends. This part is called _________.
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generally away from the Sun
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Which direction do a comet's dust and plasma tails point?
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a large member of the Kuiper belt
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According to current evidence, Pluto is best explained as ______.
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Fossilized dinosaur bones contain fragments of rock from the impact.
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Which of the following is not a piece of evidence supporting the idea that an impact caused the mass extinction that occurred 65 million years ago?
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orbital resonances with Jupiter
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Gaps in the asteroid belt (often called Kirkwood gaps) are caused by ________.
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Objects in the Kuiper belt are made mostly of rock and metal.
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Which of the following statements is not true?
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If we could put all the asteroids together, they would make an object about the size of Earth.
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Which statement about asteroids is not true?
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the rings of Saturn
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In science fiction movies, spaceships are often shown dodging through large numbers of closely spaced, boulder-size objects. Which of the following real things in our solar system would look most like such science fiction dangers?
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the coma
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When a comet passes near the Sun, part of it takes on the appearance of a large, bright ball from which the tail extends. This part is called ________.
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Pluto grows a coma and a long tail when it is at the point in its orbit closest to the Sun.
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Which of the following is not a piece of evidence supporting the idea that Pluto is a large comet of the Kuiper belt?
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a large member of the Kuiper belt
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According to current evidence, Pluto is best explained as ________.
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Your meteorite is a fragment from the core of a large asteroid that shattered in a collision.
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Suppose you find a meteorite made almost entirely of metal. According to current science, which of the following statements must be true?
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the 1994 impact of a chain of comet fragments into Jupiter
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What was the Shoemaker-Levy 9 impact?
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much less than the mass of any terrestrial planet
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If we could put all the asteroids together, their total mass would be ________.
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Gravitational tugs from Jupiter prevented material from collecting together to form a planet.
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Why didn't a planet form where the asteroid belt is now located?
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of global climate effects initiated by dust and smoke that entered the atmosphere after the impact
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If the hypothesis tracing the extinction of the dinosaurs to an impact is correct, the dinosaurs died off largely because ________.
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It is a little less than half the diameter of our Moon.
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Which of the following statements best describes the size of the largest asteroid, Ceres?
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Oort cloud comets
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Which of the following objects are probably not located in the same general region of the solar system in which they originally formed?
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Pluto orbits the Sun exactly two times for every three Neptune orbits, which ensures they never come close together.
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Why won't Pluto collide with Neptune?
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a piece of rock that is essentially unchanged since it first condensed and accreted in the solar nebula some 4.6 billion years ago
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What do we mean by a primitive meteorite?
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an icy object that orbits in the Kuiper belt and is larger than Pluto
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What is Eris?
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the extinction of a large fraction of the world's plant and animal species in a relatively short period of time
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What do we mean by a mass extinction?
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being a fragment from Comet Halley
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Among discovered meteorites, we have found some with all the following origins except ________.
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the largest of Pluto's five known moons
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What is Charon?
