Q 01/05

Why are dark matter detectors such as LZ built deep underground?

A) To keep them extremely cold

B) To isolate them from vibration

C) To shield them from cosmic rays

D) To escape radio interference

Answer · why

C) To shield them from cosmic rays

To shield them from cosmic rays. Under Italy's Gran Sasso mountain, 1,400 metres of rock cut that rain of particles about a million times, so a single...

Q 02/05

Dark matter outweighs ordinary matter, but what makes up the largest share of the universe?

A) Antimatter

B) Dark energy

C) Black holes

D) Interstellar gas

Answer · why

B) Dark energy

Dark energy. It makes up roughly two-thirds of the universe, so dark matter, though it outweighs every star, planet and gas cloud put together, is onl...

Q 03/05

Dark matter outweighs ordinary matter roughly how many times over?

A) 2 times

B) 5 times

C) 15 times

D) 50 times

Answer · why

B) 5 times

5 times. Dark matter is about 85% of all matter, which is why the stars and gas we can see supply far too little gravity to hold a spinning galaxy tog...

Q 04/05

Dark matter is spread so thinly near the Sun that all of it inside Neptune's orbit weighs about as much as what?

A) The Moon

B) A large asteroid

C) A grain of sand

D) The Earth

Answer · why

B) A large asteroid

A large asteroid. Dark matter outweighs ordinary matter only because it fills the vast spaces of the galaxy; near the Sun it is spread far more thinly...

Q 05/05

Which British physicist speculated that many stars near the Sun might be dark bodies?

A) Heinrich Hertz

B) Lord Rayleigh

C) Ludwig Boltzmann

D) Lord Kelvin

Answer · why

D) Lord Kelvin

Lord Kelvin. He treated the Milky Way's stars like the particles of a gas, worked out from their speeds how much mass could be present, and concluded ...