Impacts With Space Objects Chapter 17 11e Full Test Bank

Natural Disasters, 11e (Abbott)

Chapter 17 Impacts with Space Objects

1) Stony meteorites are less commonly collected than iron meteorites because ________.

A) they break up more readily while passing through the Earth's atmospheric filter

B) those that reach the ground are weathered and destroyed more rapidly

C) they are not as easily recognized as "irons"

D) All of these choices are correct.

E) None of these choices are correct.

2) Why are there so many more impact craters visible on the Moon than on Earth?

A) The Moon has been hit by many more meteorites than Earth, particularly the > 1 km diameter bodies that create the biggest craters.

B) The Moon formed long before Earth formed, so has had more time to be hit by meteorites.

C) The Moon is made out of softer rock than Earth that is more readily deformed when impacted by meteorites.

D) Because of gravitational effects, the Moon deflects many of the meteorites that would otherwise hit Earth.

E) Craters on Earth can be destroyed by erosion and mountain-building processes, or obscured by vegetation or sedimentation.

F) The period of heavy meteorite bombardment of Earth occurred only when the planet was very young and entirely molten, so craters were not created.

3) When space debris blazes through Earth's atmosphere as a streak of light or shooting star, it is referred to as a ________.

A) moonlet

B) falling star

C) sunspot

D) meteor

E) meteorite

4) Asteroids lie mostly ________.

A) between Mars and Jupiter

B) between the Sun and Mercury

C) beyond Pluto, and in the Van Halen Belt

D) between Mercury and the Sun

E) between Uranus and Neptune

5) In 1994, the comet Shoemaker-Levy crashed with spectacular results into ________.

A) Saturn

B) Mars

C) Titan

D) Jupiter

E) Venus

6) The space between Mars and Jupiter is occupied by ________.

A) bolides

B) meteorites

C) asteroids

D) comets

E) ejecta

7) The long-period comets that encircle our solar system do so in the area referred to as the ________. 

A) Oort cloud

B) ice veil

C) Hubble nebula

D) Kuiper Belt

E) "rubble piles"

8) Evidence for the impact that occurred near Chicxulub, Mexico, includes all but which of the following?

A) Quartz grains with shocked crystal structures indicate a short and violent impact.

B) There are iridium anomalies at roughly 100 sites worldwide in a thin layer of rock 65 million years old.

C) Sand-sized spherules of minerals suggesting a melting and resolidification of rock.

D) Large pieces of the suspected meteorite have been found in Mexico.

E) The K/T boundary clay have a different composition from clay in the limestone layers above and below it.

9) When a meteorite large enough to cause a crater hits Earth, the size of the impact crater is ________.

A) smaller than the meteorite

B) about 20 times the diameter of the meteorite

C) about the same as the meteorite

D) determined mostly by the angle of impact

E) determined mostly by the rock type at the point of impact

10) Critical evidence for the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary impact includes ________.

A) dinosaur fossils worldwide just above the layer of impact debris

B) an iridium anomaly in a thin layer of rock 65 million years old

C) recovery of very large pieces of meteorite

D) the discovery of a crater covered by jungle vegetation in Brazil

E) an Iranian deposit of reddish iron-bearing strata

11) What two events likely caused the extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous?

A) an ice age and asteroid impact

B) an asteroid impact and massive flood basalt eruption

C) a massive fall in sea level and volcanic eruption

D) the evolution of mammals and an ice age

E) a global fire and related fireball impacts

12) A major comet or meteorite impact occurred in Mexico at the time boundary between the ________.

A) Pleistocene and Pliocene

B) Precambrian and Cambrian

C) Cretaceous and Tertiary

D) Pliocene and Miocene

E) Jurassic and Cretaceous

13) Relatively few impact craters have been discovered on Earth because ________.

A) most rocks are too resistant to crater

B) the gravitational field is too weak

C) weathering, erosion, and tectonic processes mask them

D) bolides are very rare in this region of space

E) Jupiter is so large it deflects them away from Earth

14) An asteroid that passes through the keyhole ________.

A) is headed for a direct collision with the Sun

B) will hit the Moon on its next orbit of the Sun

C) could be pulled into a collision course with Earth

D) will be thrown out of our solar system

E) will avoid an impact with any planet in our solar system

15) The planets and the asteroid belt orbit the Sun in ________.

A) a spherical distribution, whereas the Oort cloud of comets orbits in a plane

B) a spherical distribution similar to that of the Oort cloud of comets

C) planes tilted at an angle to the plane of the Oort cloud of comets

D) planes, whereas the Oort cloud of comets has a spherical distribution

E) orbits nearly identical to the Oort cloud of comets

16) Comets are composed of ________.

A) ice and rocky debris

B) gas, mostly hydrogen and helium

C) solid rock, mostly andesite

D) electromagnetic plasma

E) mostly organic material

17) The solar wind is ________.

A) what causes visible dust storms on Mars

B) wind blowing on the surface of the Sun

C) wind blowing within the Sun's dense gas below the surface

D) the stream of subatomic particles flying outward from the Sun

E) a blast of sunspot energy

18) A comet's tail ________.

A) lines up with the solar wind moving outward from the Sun

B) points toward the nearest planet as a result of its gravity

C) is a vapor trail behind a comet that points in the direction from which the comet came

D) always points toward the Sun

E) is composed of smoke from the burning comet

19) Halley's comet has an average orbital period of ________ years.

A) 76 

B) 10

C) 577 

D) about 10,000

E) about 100,000 

20) The number of incoming objects is related to their size; the ________.

A) smaller the meteoroids, the greater their abundance

B) larger the meteoroids, the greater their abundance

C) number is the same for each size range

D) size is inversely proportional to the number

21) The world's classic meteorite crater (Barringer Crater) lies on an arid portion of the Colorado Plateau in ________.

A) Wyoming

B) Colorado

C) Utah

D) New Mexico

E) Arizona

22) Evidence demonstrating that the crater in Arizona formed by meteorite impact includes all but which of the following?

A) The crater is steep-sided and closed.

B) The rim of surrounding rock was created by uplifting the horizontal sedimentary-rock layers of the region and tilting them away from the crater.

C) Little hills of rock outside the crater rim are inverted piles of the rock sequence exposed in the crater walls.

D) Huge blocks of limestone are strewn around outside the crater.

E) A 550-ton spherical piece of nickel-iron metallic meteorite was found below the crater.

23) The 1-cm-thick clay layer that marks the Cretaceous/Tertiary (K/T) boundary has a high percentage of the element ________ in the clay layer, an enrichment about 300 times greater than the normal abundance.

A) iridium

B) silicon

C) iron

D) oxygen

E) zircon

24) The ________ sizes of meteoroids are the ones most affected by passing through Earth's atmosphere.

A) smallest

B) largest

C) intermediate

D)  largest and smallest

25) Meteoroids with extremely large surface areas relative to their volume ________ when passing though Earth's atmosphere.

A) cool off as fast as they heat up

B) vaporize quickly

C) freeze and thaw repeatedly

D) are immune to friction

E) do not gain or lose heat

26) Why do meteorites on Earth's surface have glazed and blackened outer crusts?

A) Meteorites are commonly burned during forest fires.

B) The outer surface formed as it melted from the heat of friction during their meteoric phase.

C) Bacteria, drawn to the organic compounds, form the outer crust as they die.

D) The outer layer was burned and formed by solar winds in space.

E) The outer crust forms as the meteorites chemically weather.

27) Where is the best place on Earth to find meteorites?

A) Antarctica

B) North America

C) Europe

D) Africa

E) Asia

28) The amount of energy released by an asteroid or comet impact is directly related to its ________ at the time of the collision.

A) composition and shape

B) density and shape

C) velocity and specific heat

D) composition and volume

E) mass and speed

29) Why does finding stishovite at Earth's surface indicate an asteroid impact occurred in the area?

A) Stishovite contains elements not found on Earth.

B) Stishovite forms as quartz is subjected to the high pressure during an impact.

C) Stishovite grows in soil enriched in iridium.

D) The cores of most asteroids contain the otherwise rare stishovite.

E) Stishovite forms as the outer surface of an asteroid cools after an impact.

30) Tektites are ________.

A) glassy spherules formed by in-air cooling of impact-melted rock

B) geological structures formed as the rim of an impact crater is turned up

C) carbon-rich rocks found at the center of impact craters

D) trees knocked over by a mid-air explosion of a meteoroid

E) ultramafic iron-rich meteorites

31) The Moon has active plate tectonics. 

32) The major types of meteorites are either "irons" (metallic) or "stones" (rocky).

33) Most of the meteorites collected on Earth's surface are "irons."

34) Space debris that collides with Earth comes primarily from fragmented asteroids and secondarily from comets.

35) Asteroids are distinguished from meteorites by their composition.

36) Our solar system has 11 known planets in orbit around the Sun.

37) The four inner planets are small, relatively close together, and rocky. 

38) The outer planets lie at great distances from the Sun, and are composed mainly of hydrogen and helium gas surrounding rocky cores.

39) Clusters of asteroids such as the Apollos have orbits that intersect Earth's orbit.

40) The solar system is surrounded by the Oort cloud composed of about a trillion comets, icy objects with orbits that take them far beyond the outermost planets of our solar system. 

41) A comet may travel 100,000 astronomical units away during its orbit (an astronomical unit is the distance between Earth and Sun). 

42) A comet's tail is produced by the charged particles of the solar wind acting on comet ices.

43) As a comet curves around the Sun, its tail rotates also, always pointing away from the direction in which the comet is heading.

44) The nearer an icy comet approaches the Sun, the smaller its tail becomes.

45) The most famous of the comets is the one carrying Edmund Halley's name, the man who calculated its orbit in 1682 and predicted its return to the inner solar system.

46) Some students in this class will likely live long enough to see a return of Halley's comet.

47) Halley's comet contains carbon (C), hydrogen (H), oxygen (O), and nitrogen (N) in ratios similar to that in the human body.

48) The relative numbers of incoming objects are not related to their size.

49) Abundant large diamonds, also commonly found in meteorites, occur in the K/T boundary clay layer.

50) Estimating the magnitude of the K/T boundary impact earthquake can be done by scaling up from the energy released in nuclear explosions, leading to an estimate of a K/T impact earthquake of magnitude 11.3.

51) Statistically, your risk of being killed by a meteoroid impact is greater than winning a big lottery jackpot (e.g., Powerball).

52) The biggest known impact on Earth in the twentieth century was the Tunguska, Siberia, event in 1908.

53) A comet's tail results from the increased speed that a comet attains as it nears the Sun, leaving some particles behind because of the acceleration of the main mass of the comet.

54) Larger meteorite impacts occur more frequently than smaller impacts.

55) Small meteorite impacts create craters with central uplifts, while large impacts create craters with concave bottoms and no central uplifts.

56) Some asteroids are not solid bodies, but rather "rubble piles" held together by the mutual gravitational attraction of all the individual pieces.

57) The largest asteroid in the asteroid belt is known as ________, and is also classified as the smallest dwarf planet.

A) Polaris

B) Ceres

C) Io

D) Titan

58) Flood basalts poured forth from the Moon about 3.8 to 3.2 billion years ago and created dark areas on the Moon called ________, and are prominent features on the lunar surface today.

A) maria

B) crater wall

C) penumbra

D) albedo

59) Which of the following significant, game-changing insights were gained from the Rosetta spacecraft and Philae lander orbiting and landing on Comet 67P?

A) Comet 67P has never been exposed to high temperatures or violent impacts.

B) There is more dust than water rising on the surface of 67P.

C) Comet 67P carries a rich load of organic molecules that could serve as the building blocks for life.

D) All of these choices are correct.

60) On 09 March 1989, a powerful explosion on the Sun, known as a ________, hit the Earth at more than 1 million miles an hour and knocked out the power grid in the Province of Quebec, Canada.

A) spectral mass evacuation

B) coronal convergence

C) coronal mass ejection

D) spectral sunspots

61) Minerals such as quartz are transformed into ________, which results from the atomic structure being transformed by the high-pressure impact of the meteorite.

A) stibnite

B) stishovite

C) bornite

D) franklinite

62) ________ is the large impact crater in southern Ontario that is about 100 km in diameter and dates to about 214 million years.

A) Barringer

B) Crooked Creek

C) Manicouagan

D) Upheval Dome

63) The ________ Scale is used to classify impacts, and ranges from 0, which is no impact possibilities, to 10, which is classified as a global catastrophe.

A) Scoville

B) Fujita

C) Richter

D) Torino