Dark Physics

15 Points Per Correct Answer - No time limit  

1. There is nothing, truly nothing. No matter or energy, neither time nor space. And then, in an instant, there is a flood of... something - exploding, expanding, taking on shape and structure, generating the very laws of the universe. Had there only been someone there to hear, what they might have called it? Answer: (Three Words)

2. The chaos coalesces. Gravitational attraction brings tiny bits of matter together. But there are points at which there is neither matter nor electromagnetic radiation. Still, a strange quantum-mechanical potential lurks there. Which of these could it be? Little bangs Zero point energy Planck fluctuations Anti-matter implosion

3. On a tiny blue planet orbiting a seething gaseous ball, somewhat intelligent life notices a baffling phenomenon. When they take an empty box and punch a hole in it, radiation streams out from the black interior of the empty box. What name is given to this radiation? Hubble bodies Black Body Radiation Quantum vacuum fields Neutralino flux

4. Other denizens of the small blue planet occupy their time with attempting to suck every last molecule out of closed containers to produce a perfect vacuum. Which of the following are examples of a truly perfect vacuum? Both Intergalactic space Neither The best artificial human vacuum

5. Stars form. Stars age. And as the larger stars age, they exhaust their fuel until finally one force predominates: gravity. These stars collapse on themselves, becoming ever smaller until their density is so high, their gravitational force so great, that nothing, not even electromagnetic radiation, can escape their grasp. When the inhabitants of our small planet conceive of these holes in the sky, what do they come to be called? Answer: (Two words)

6. The creatures of the little blue planet have fertile imaginations. They can, for instance, imagine an infinity of nothing, a place with infinite volume where there is neither matter nor energy. And having imagined such an absolutely desolate place, what temperature do they assign to it? Absolute zero 0 degrees Fahrenheit 0 degrees Celsius - 100 degrees Celsius

7. As the beings of the small planet turn their attention to things ever smaller and more insubstantial, they cannot but succumb to the temptation to make analogies between the behavior of the larger things they can see and the smaller things they cannot. Thus, they come to believe that just as ocean waves are oscillations in a sea of liquid water, so light must oscillate in its own vast sea of "luminiferous ether". Which scientist showed that light and other electromagnetic waves could propagate in nothing? Planck Maxwell Lorentz Einstein

8. Peering through their telescopes into the void, observers on our little blue world have watched the galaxies in their dance and concluded that 96% of the universe's mass is invisible. So now, in Cleveland, England, at the bottom of Europe's deepest mine, in a deep mine in Minnesota, and in a tunnel under Stanford University, detectors sit. They wait for a neutralino, for a WIMP, for a Nobel Prize. What are they hoping to detect? Black mass Dark matter Vacuous deposits Microquarks

9. As the power of their telescopes increases, the inventive folk of the little blue speck in the void notice that not only do the galaxies seem to be spreading out and moving away from one another but that the galaxies farthest away seem to be moving away faster. One possible explanation for this is that matter carries only 1/3 of the mass of the universe while a type of energy carries the rest. Since this energy is at present undetectable, what has it been called? Dark energy Ghostly neutrinos Black emissions Dormant mesons

10. The scientists inhabiting the little blue planet conclude that their universe must suffer one of three fates: implosion (The Big Crunch), infinite expansion in a plane or infinite hyperbolic expansion. The value of a certain constant, they theorize, will determine the universe's fate. What has this crucial constant been named? Heidelberg's number The gravimetric radius Planck's variable The cosmological constant