Re: Astronomy survey

David Perron — Tue, 05 Nov 2002 05:32:16 -0000

What in the name of doG is astrology doing in there? I thought this was about scientific literacy. Here's my answers:

1) David, age 41, engineer.
2) Gemini, for whatever it's worth. Something to do with the constellation Gemini being at a certain place in the night sky, although this is not really either astrology OR astronomy.
3) Neither. They orbit a common center of gravity, which happens to be very close to the center of the sun.
4) much farther
5) much farther
6) five billion years or older.
7) Depends on what you mean by "last forever". More than likely it'll wind up being a cold cinder eventually. Some of the mass will still be there; does that mean it lasted forever?
8) Energy is currently (mostly) produced from hydrogen fusion. This will eventually change.
9) A satellite will continue to orbit as long as it has enough fuel on board to compensate for drag and other perturbations. "what keeps it up" on a second-to-second basis is the fact that its centripetal acceleration of orbital motion is equal to gravity, loosely speaking.
10) Both a really good candy bar, and a group of billions of stars (orbiting a common center of gravity) called a galaxy.

Or were those rhetorical questions?

Re: Astronomy survey

Dodd — Thu, 24 Oct 2002 12:21:02 -0000

Agreed. I can answer all of them except why people born on the Ides of March are assigned to Pisces (and I have an answer for that, I'm just not sure if it's what the question is asking for). Are you going to post the answers?

Re: Astronomy survey

Ken Layne — Thu, 24 Oct 2002 11:17:16 -0000

Richard - I can answer them all without consulting a book/search engine ... but am I right? (I'm not sure about the "how much longer" part of question #7, and "long enough for my purposes" probably wouldn't impress a teacher.)

Broadband Politics - Latest Comments in Astronomy survey

Re: Astronomy survey

Re: Astronomy survey

Re: Astronomy survey