Advance Quiz #15

How would the rings of Saturn be different if Saturn had no moons (yet somehow still had rings anyway)? Select one: a. There would be no gaps in the rings from orbital resonances. b. There would be no gaps in the rings from shepherd moons. c. The rings would be thicker-- not confined so tightly to the plane of Saturn's equator. d. Both answers A and B. e. All answers A, B, and C.

Which of the following is not true of asteroids? Select one: a. Only a minority of all asteroids are in the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter. Correct b. Some asteroids have orbits which cross Earth's orbit. c. Some asteroids follow the same orbital path as Jupiter. d. The total mass of all asteroids in the Solar System is smaller than the mass of Mercury. e. Most of the meteorites that fall to Earth originate from asteroids.

Suppose that a trillion kilograms of material composes the tail of a certain comet, and this tail is 100 million km long, one million km thick, and one million km wide. Estimate the average density of the tail in kg/m3 and compare this to the 1.2 kg/m3 density of the air you breath.

Suppose that the solar wind had not cleared the Solar Nebula until much later in our Solar System's history, so that Jupiter accumulated 40 times as much mass as it actually has today. What, then, do you expect would be different about the resulting "super-Jupiter" compared to the Jupiter we actually got?

Meteoroids or small comets strike on or destructively near to Earth's surface with the force of an atomic bomb

Given that Triton gradually is spiraling inward toward Neptune, what is its likely fate?

Each ring particle in the densest part of Saturn's rings collides with another ring particle approximately every 5 hours. If a ring particle survived for the age of our Solar System, approximately how many collisions would it undergo?

H2O clouds on Jupiter and Saturn exist where the temperature is

Suppose that Asteroid X and Asteroid Y are equally distant from the Earth and from the Sun, and both appear equally bright visually. If Asteroid Y emits twice as much infrared thermal radiation as Asteroid X, then

Liquid water is believed likely to exist inside

Use information available in your textbook to identify the orbital resonance between Saturn's moons Titan and Hyperion.

Which property of Uranus is most difficult to explain?