NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has created a “burning question” quiz to help students understand the science behind space exploration.
The quiz will be available in the fall for free online and in-person at the agency’s JetPropulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and will be presented at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, Calif.
In this quiz, students will answer questions like, “Why is the moon covered in water?” or “Is there an afterlife?”
The answers will be revealed on Sept. 12, the day before NASA officially launches its new robotic probe called Juno, and will help inform the agency when it launches its next spacecraft to the asteroid belt.
The answers, which will be submitted online by Sept. 16, are:The agency’s answer to a burning query: “Why are the stars aligned in such a way that the Earth rotates at a faster rate than the sun?”
According to the agency, the answer is because the Sun is a massive star, and its gravitational pull creates a spinning planet called a black hole.
The Sun’s spin causes the Earth to orbit the black hole, and the black holes’ gravity pulls Earth into a spiral, where it orbits the Sun once more.
