A New Horizon Trivia Quiz

Answer: Galileo

Italian scientist Galileo (Galileo Galilei, 1564-1642) made many significant contributions in the fields of physics and astronomy including the highly controversial topic of heliocentrism (the sun being the centre of our solar system rather than Earth). This resulted in heresy charges from the Catholic Church and house arrest for the last 12 years of his life.

Galileo developed his telescope from a preliminary Dutch design from 1608 and continually improved it to the point where he could see 3 (and soon 4) bright objects in the vicinity of Jupiter. He then realized that, as they periodically disappeared from view behind the planet, they were actually moons. These moons, Io, Callisto, Europa and the largest of them, Ganymede, were actually named by German astronomer, Simon Marius in 1610. It wasn't until the early 20th century that Marius' claims of independent discovery of these moons was verified; this extreme delay was in part due to the veneration of Galileo by the scientific community.

Answer: Borman, Anders & Lovell

From the time humankind first gazed up into the night sky, the moon has been visible and has been a key focal point in many mythologies. The reason that the same side (face) of the moon always points to earth is its synchronous rotation; the moon orbits the earth every 27.3 days and it also rotates once on its axis every 27.3 days.

This matching of orbit and rotation is not coincidental, it originates from the strong gravitational effect of the earth. Consequently, the first humans to see the other, or 'dark', side of the moon were the crew of the first spacecraft to orbit the moon, the Apollo 8 mission.

The first manned mission to leave low earth orbit, Apollo 8 launched on December 21st, 1968 with a crew of Frank Borman (Commander), William Anders and James Lovell, and orbited the moon ten times before safely returning to earth on Dec 27.

Answer: van Leeuwenhoek

Born in Delft, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) was initially a draper who then developed an interest and great aptitude in science. For his business, he wanted to more easily observe the fine threads in his cloth which resulted in his improvement in the making of high quality soda glass lenses. He then created a 'microscope' by placing a single lens in a mount, achieving a magnification of 275 times.

Unlike most traditional scientists, he was secretive about his methods, causing frustration to many, including Robert Hooke (the discoverer of the cell). Antithetically, he was constantly corresponding with several scientific societies where he described his findings. He used his ever-improving microscopes to observe rain water droplets where he found very small organisms (later called algae and protists) in the water. Then using his most powerful lenses, he observed even smaller spirals and 'sticks' which he named 'animalcules' or tiny animals. These were then named bacteria, after the Greek bakterion, for 'small staff or rod'. It wasn't until the mid-19th century that Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister established the links between bacteria and disease.

Answer: Ross

The existence of Antarctica was first postulated by the ancient Greeks who argued that a large continent would be needed in the south to balance the land mass of the north. Starting from the 1400s, several global exploration expeditions searching for this land may have seen evidence of either the continent itself or sub-Antarctic islands including James Cook in the 1770s. Intriguingly, there is a contention that Polynesians may have landed on Antarctica in the 7th century CE. There is, however, little doubt that two expeditions in 1820 did find this continent apparently 3 days apart: the first was a Russian expedition led by Fabian von Bellingshausen who observed what is now Queen Maud Land, then a British expedition led by Edward Bransfield saw the Antarctic Peninsula.

Mt Erebus is the southern-most active volcano in the world. It is found on Ross Island, about 40 km (25 miles) off the Antarctic mainland. The summit contains a convecting lava lake. The existence of this volcano, which was erupting at the time, was first recorded in January 1841 by British polar explorer, Sir James Clark Ross during his polar scientific expedition of 1839-1843.

Answer: Miescher

I wonder if you, like I would have(!), saw DNA and immediately searched for Watson, Crick and hopefully Franklin in the possible answers? These eminent scientists were instrumental in determining the double helix structure of DNA in 1953. However, DNA had been known for over 80 years by that point in time. The Swiss scientist, Friedrich Miescher (1844-1895) isolated a compound he called 'nuclein' from the cell nucleus obtained from waste bandages and pus. He verified that this was a single molecule with a prescribed nitrogen to phosphorus content as well as carbon, oxygen and hydrogen. He researched this molecule, which was subsequently renamed deoxyribose nucleic acid (DNA) for the rest of his career. Although his initial isolation of DNA was in 1869, it wasn't until 1871 that he published his findings. This molecule was studied extensively in many laboratories over the following decades and research still continues today.

Perhaps in this case a physical disability resulted in a great scientific breakthrough as Miescher studied medicine in the hope of taking up that vocation, but a hearing difficulty meant he could not properly interact with patients. So instead he joined the company Hoppe-Seyler in the research group devoted to identifying the constituent components of human cells.

Answer: Montgolfier brothers

The Montgolfier brothers, Jacques-Etienne (1745 - 1799) and older sibling Joseph-Michel (1740 - 1810), were just two of the 16 children growing up in a family centred on the paper making business in Annonay in France. Joseph's interest in aeronautics and the observations of laundry billowing in updrafts from a fire led to their invention of the hot-air balloon which they first publicly demonstrated in a 10-minute flight above Anonsay in June 1783. National interest was aroused and the king, Louis XVI, wanted to see the balloon in action for himself.

Due to the concern that high altitude may affect humans, the flight at Versailles in September featured a sheep, a rooster and a duck in a balloon designed and built by Etienne and Jean-Baptiste Reveillon, a wallpaper maker. The balloon landed safely after an 8-minute flight that covered 3 km (2 miles). Soon afterwards, Etienne and Reveillon constructed an even larger balloon that was successfully flown and safely landed by Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes - this was the first free flight undertaken by humankind.

Answer: Rutherford, Geiger & Marsden

Following the pioneering work of John Dalton a century earlier, there was much interest in the early 20th century in the composition of atoms. In 1911, NZ physicist Ernest Rutherford, with colleagues Ernest Marsden and Hans Geiger, published their research which completely changed how atoms were perceived. The team had fired alpha particles (He2+ nuclei generated from decay of radioactive radium) at a thin gold sheet and found that almost all went through the foil to a zinc sulfide detector. However, about 1 in 8,000 particles were deflected, some by much more than 90 degrees. This famous 'gold foil' experiment led Rutherford to conclude that an atom is composed largely of empty space with a small dense 'core' called the nucleus. The deflections occurred when an alpha particle deflected off the nucleus. This was completely counter-intuitive at that time as the gold foil appeared solid so how could particles pass through it? The answer was found by using atom-sized particles.

Rutherford later commented, "It was quite the most incredible event that has ever happened to me in my life. It was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you."

Answer: Becquerel

French physicist and engineer Henri Becquerel (1852 - 1908) shared the 1903 Nobel Prize for Physics with Pierre and Marie Curie for the discovery of radioactivity. Becquerel was the first to recognize this new phenomenon when, as part of his investigations into phosphorescence and considering the recent discovery of X-rays by Roentgen, he thought that uranium salts might emit X-rays when exposed to intense light. In a series of experiments, he realized that non-phosphorescent uranium salts still emitted penetrating radiation without external stimulation. He had discovered radioactivity. This initiated a flurry of research by himself (with 7 papers published in 1896 alone), the Curies who discovered polonium and radium, and many others.

In his honor, the SI unit of radioactivity is called the Becquerel (Bq) where 1 Bq = 1 atomic disintegration per second.

Answer: Walsh & Piccard

The Challenger Deep is the deepest known point in the Earth's oceans. The depth is estimated as between 10.902 to 10.929 km (35,768-35,856 feet) with the variations due to the different instrumental methods used to record this distance. The Challenger Deep is a narrow defile in the Mariana Trench, which itself is the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean and the deepest trench in the world. The Mariana Trench lies off the coast of the islands of the same name in the western Pacific. The Deep was first located by survey ship HMS Challenger in its voyage during 1872 to 1876 and was subsequently named in the ship's honor.

In 1960, the bathyscaphe 'Trieste', with Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard aboard, descended into the Challenger Deep and reached the oceanic floor. Since that time, a number of unmanned and manned vessels have made this same journey, including the film director James Cameron in the vessel 'Deepsea Challenger' in 2012. These voyages and the craft that enable them are quite amazing as the water pressure at the bottom of Challenger Deep is around 1000 atmospheres or about 8 tons per square inch.

Answer: Ballard & Michel

With great loss of life, the RMS Titanic sank on the 15th April 1912 in the North Atlantic Ocean. However, the wreckage of the one-time largest ship ever built, was not found for another 73 years. After a number of unsuccessful schemes and proposed methodologies, a team led by two oceanographers, American Professor Robert Ballard and French Jean-Louis Michel from IFREMER (Institut Français de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer), found the ship's debris field using cameras from the unmanned submersible vessel, 'Argo'.

Many previous attempts had employed sonar. Once the debris field was located, the two halves of the sunken vessel were found some 600 metres (660 yards) apart and at a depth of approximately 3.8 km (12,600 feet). Since 1985, thousands of objects have been reclaimed from the depths, resulting in many legal cases regarding ownership.