Characteristics and Origins of the Solar System

Sample Examination

December 11, 2000

This sample exam is intended to be helpful to you in studying for the exam, not to be a scourge. You can do as much or as little as you wish with this document. I am not going to collect answers. My intention is that the questions on the real exam should resemble these, and I may even use one or two of them. Note that the questions contain two categories; the first is from the last portion of the course, i.e. from November 17, and the second consists of Meaning of it all type questions from the whole semester.

1. Discuss our current knowledge of other stars like the Sun? Are there any? What characteristics do we measure and compare?
2. What and where is the source of the meteorites? Give arguments to support your answer. Revelations are not accepted.
3. Are asteroids a homogeneous class of objects? Discuss and amplify upon your answer.
4. Describe where in space asteroids are found.
5. The distribution of asteroid orbits has distinct features categorized as Kirkwood’s Gaps. Describe them and cite another solar system phenomenon which is highly analogous.
6. Ultraviolet light has a sterilizing effect on life. Describe how and why it is absent from our environment here at the surface of the Earth.
7. Describe some of the astronomical phenomena that are lumped under the term “solar activity”. Why is this subject frequently in the news nowadays?
8. In about two paragraphs, discuss the differences between stars and planets.
9. Almost all of the universe is in a gaseous state. Yet we live on the surface of a solid, rocky object and we have discussed numerous similar objects in this course. How did these objects arise out of the essentially gaseous early solar system?
10. In lecture and the textbook, we discussed the current scientific view of how the Sun and planets formed. Discuss the evidence (preferably observational astronomical evidence) which can be summoned to support this description.
11. How long ago did the solar system form? Describe how we know this.
12. Discuss, in about one page, a way in which astronomy contributes to, or plays an important role in, discussions of the origin of life on Earth. Note that there are a number of possible answers to this question.
13. Ten years from now you read that another major planet has been discussed, with a semimajor axis of 100 astronomical units. Based on what you have learned in this course, give a plausible description of the nature of this object. In other words, what would we predict for the characteristics of this planet?
14. The question of life in the universe involves the probability of a planet like the Earth forming around a star. Using what you have learned in this course, discuss how common or uncommon the Earth is.
15. Based on your observations of the present locations of the planets in the night sky, sketch a diagram showing the current location of the planets relative to the Earth. Begin your discussion with a description of where the planets are in the night sky, then proceed to discuss how you infer their positions in the solar system.