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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Quantum physics first emerged in what year?
(a) 1818.
(b) 1900.
(c) 1905.
(d) 1796.

2. Who discovered the period-luminosity phenomena that enabled the distances of the Milky Way and objects in deep space to be measured?
(a) Henrietta Leavitt.
(b) Harlow Shapley.
(c) Jean Richer.
(d) Robert Smith.

3. The "probability" nature of quantum physics bothered what physicist who thought a some point a quantum theory of certitudes would be developed?
(a) Archimedes.
(b) Robert Hooke.
(c) Albert Einstein.
(d) Jean Richer.

4. Where was Albert Einstein born?
(a) Poland.
(b) England.
(c) France.
(d) Germany.

5. Who estimated that the existence of over one hundred thousand such spiral nebulae was possible?
(a) William Parsons.
(b) John Calvin.
(c) James Keeler.
(d) Aristotle.

6. Who worked under George Hale, director of the Mount Wilson Observatory, as described by the author in Chapter 9?
(a) Harlow Shapley.
(b) Emanuel Kant.
(c) Jean Richer.
(d) Mikolai Kopernik.

7. Who wrote, "The greatest of all the accomplishments of twentieth-century science has been the discovery of human ignorance"?
(a) Lew Thomas.
(b) Giuseppe Cocconi.
(c) James Williams.
(d) Philip Morrison.

8. What was the name of Charles Darwin's grandfather who had written the book, "Zoonomia"?
(a) Edwin Darwin.
(b) James Darwin.
(c) Erasmus Darwin.
(d) Johann Darwin.

9. William Herschel became most famous for the discovery of which planet?
(a) Venus.
(b) Pluto.
(c) Uranus.
(d) Mars.

10. What is the religious belief that humanity, life, the Earth, and the universe are the creation of a supernatural being, most often referring to the Abrahamic God?
(a) Creationism.
(b) Heliocentricism.
(c) Asceticism.
(d) Triangulation.

11. What is the second premise of "On the Origin of Species"?
(a) Survival is based on nature versus nurture.
(b) Survival is based on the process of natural selection.
(c) There are variations within species.
(d) Living creatures create more off-spring than nature can support.

12. What is the body of scientific principles that explains the behavior of matter and its interactions with energy on the scale of atoms and atomic particles?
(a) Asceticism.
(b) Alchemy.
(c) Quantum mechanics.
(d) The Tychonic system.

13. Charles Darwin went on a five-year world-wide expedition on what brig?
(a) The Beagle.
(b) The HMS Explorer.
(c) The USS Explorer.
(d) The HMS Endeavor.

14. Although the behavior of gravitation still holds in Einstein's theory of relativity, there is a breakdown when it comes to gravitational fields within what?
(a) Quantum leaps.
(b) Black holes.
(c) Triangulation.
(d) Observational astronomy.

15. In Chapter 9, the author discusses how there were two schools of thought about elliptical nebulae. One was the theory of what by Kant and Lambert?
(a) Quantum mechanics.
(b) The "nebular hypothesis."
(c) The "island universe."
(d) The Tychonic system.

Short Answer Questions

1. What are fuzzy patches of glowing material that can be observed throughout the universe?

2. Where was René Descartes born?

3. What astrophysicist first referred to a single quantum of energy that erupted and unleashed the universe as the "big bang"?

4. The question that has plagued everyone from ordinary man to astrophysicist is what, according to the author in Chapter 19?

5. What is a member of a class of very luminous variable stars?

(see the answer keys)

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