supernova remnant questions

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. What is the closest location for finding material formed in a supernova explosion?

a. the Milky Way

b. the Orion nebula

c. the Crab Nebula

e. your own body

2. A remarkable observation from the 1987A supernova was

a. the detection of gravity waves b. the detection of neutrinos

c. the detection of a pulsar d. the detection of a black hole

e. both a. and c.

3. We know that the Crab nebula is a supernova remnant because

a. it contains a pulsar b. Chinese astronomers witnessed the explosion c. it emits lots of x-rays

d. its gas is moving very rapidly e. all of the above

4. The Crab Nebula pulsar is spinning

a. fast because it is young

b. relatively slowly

c. at an ever increasing rate

e. at a rate determined by its mass

5. The cooling rate in SN 1987A showed that

a. it was full of very hot gas that could not lose energy efficiently

b. it contained huge amounts of cobalt

c. a massive star was still powering things in its core

d. it was really a type 1 supernova

e. not all the neutrinos escaped quickly

6. If you took spectra of a supernova remnant, you would see

a. only H and He

b. many elements such as O, C, Si

c. only cool gas

e. both c. and d.

7. The elements like oxygen and iron in the earth got there because

a. they were swept up as the early sun went through a region with lots of these elements

b. they came directly out of the core of the early sun after it had fused hydrogen into heavier elements

c. they were created in the early stages of the Big Bang

d. long ago, a supernova made them and ejected them into interstellar space, where they were eventually included in the gas cloud that became the sun

e. they were pulled from a passing star by the sun's gravitational field