Use these questions to test your understanding. If you get them wrong, you will be linked back to the relevant part of the notes.
Be sure you study them thoroughly (don't just get a quick fix for your mistake) so your overall understanding is improved.
1. An "open" universe is
a. one that will expand forever
b. one that galaxies can escape from, to enter other universes
c. one with a hole in it
d. one we can see out of to glimpse other worlds
e. one with critical mass
2. The Universe is
a. open
b. closed
c. at the critical density between open and closed
d. oscillating
e. articulating
3. What came before the Big Bang is
a. described by subnuclear physics
b. a vexing philosophical question for science, as for religion and other disciplines of thought
c. another Universe
d. revealed in our understanding of the Planck era
e. a sea of quarks that formed the raw material for the Universe
4. We will eventually be able to locate where the Big Bang occurred
a. by accurate measurements of galaxy velocities and distances
b. by measuring the redshifts of very distant quasars
c. using gravitational lenses
d. by measuring anisotropies on the cosmic background radiation
e. none of the above
5. How does the average density of the Universe affect its predicted fate?
a. it makes no difference
b. if the Universe has a high density, its expansion is expected to reverse and it will collapse
c. if the Universe has a high density, it will eventually form many more galaxies than now
d. a high density Universe will have many more stellar collisions
e. if the density is too high, the Universe will form too many heavy elements
6. The cosmic background was discovered
a. as a faint noise component in the microwave spectral region
b. with the 100-inch telescope
c. by infrared space missions
d. as noise that interfered with TV broadcasts
e. in early efforts to detect other civilizations
7. That the sky is dark at night shows us that
a. we are in a dark part of the Milky Way
b. there is a lot of dark matter out there
c. the Universe is expanding
d. dust blocks our view in almost every direction
e. we look up, out of the Milky Way when the earth turns us away from the sun
8. If new measurements showed that the currently adopted value if Hubble`s constant is two times too small, then we could conclude that the age of the Universe
a. was twice what we had believed before
b. was the same as we had believed before
c. was half what we had believed before
d. was four times what we had believed before
e. had changed but by an amount we could not estimate
9. The assumption that the Universe is homogeneous on very large scales is
d. the theory of equipartition
10. Hubble's Law implies that