1. astronomy
   biology
2. pharmacy
   neurology

"Aphelion" means a point at which a astronomical body is furthest from another one. This can be the Earth with the sun, or the moon with the Earth. The opposite is "perihelion."

1. yes
2. no

A brown dwarf is a star that fails to create nuclear reactions powerful enough to shine as a star. (We feel like there's a life lesson in here, somewhere).

1. Boyle
   Fahrenheit
2. Kelvin
   both #2 and #3

Celsius, Fahrenheit and Kelvin are three scales for measuring heat. We'd say "measuring temperature," but as the science-minded among you know, all temperature is heat. It's just a matter of how much or how little, down to zero Kelvin, which is absolute zero.

1. Boyle
   Zwicky
2. Schmidt
   Turing

Whatever the name, this is a telescope that uses mirrors, but has a shorter body than a traditional reflecting telescope, because it bounces the light back and forth between several mirrors to fit the focal length in a shorter space. Think of the way you fold an electric cord back on itself repeatedly to store it in a small space.

1. chemistry
   electronics
2. fluid dynamics
   astrophysics

A diode is the part of a semiconductor that only allows current to flow one way. It can be used to change alternating current to direct current.

1. creatures with exoskeletons
   life forms not on Earth
2. potential future organisms
   processes after death

Yup, this is a field, though it's fairly theoretical so far. The "discovery" of unicellular life on Mars, in the mid-'90s, proved to be a false alarm.

1. an unnatural growth in bone marrow
   a bright spot on the sun or a planet
2. a blind cave-dwelling creature
   this was just a vampire parody from the 90s

Nope, not a vampire parody! On the sun, faculae are unusually bright spots, usually found near sunspots.

1. the resistance electricity creates as it travels through wires
   the pitch of a sound
2. the number of a wave's full cycles per second
   the distance that sound waves can travel

This term comes up often in science involving radio. You might have seen it illustrated on a computer screen, as the "tightness" of the up-and-down squiggles representing a wave. The height of those waves is called "amplitude."

1. two
   three
2. four
   eight

The other three are electromagnetism, strong interaction and weak interaction. Fun fact: In the late '90s, mathematician Alan Sokal pranked an academic journal with an article claiming that gravity was a social construct, and calling for an "emancipatory mathematics." Maybe it's not fair to call the article, which the journal dutifully published, a "prank." Maybe it was an "inversion of hermeneutic norms."

1. the deceleration of Earth's rotation on its axis
   the deceleration of Earth's revolution around the sun
2. the weakening of Earth's magnetic poles
   the universe's expansion

The name "Hubble" might be more familiar to you from the Hubble Telescope. But Edwin Hubble also gave his name to this important constant in astronomic calculations.

1. feces
   allergens
2. skin
   tissue

Histology relates to tissue. You might have been briefly tempted by "allergens," since allergies usually cause tissue inflammation, and histology comes into play in that regard.

1. certain plants
   hot-air balloons
2. our moon
   our solar system

Don't be fooled by "certain plants"; the name for plants that track the sun's movement is "heliotropic." "Heliocentric" applies to our solar system, and replaced the previous "geocentric" model.

1. animal
   plant
2. rock
   star

An igneous rock is formed from volcanic processes. The other two types of rock are sedimentary and metamorphic.

1. acted on by an outside force
   growing limbs via evolutionary forces
2. reaching a certain temperature
   the end of time

Of course, on Earth there's always an outside force, even if it's just air resistance or friction. This is why we have no perpetual-motion machines.

1. heat
   light
2. resistance
   work

"Work" is a general physics term meaning the result of the application of force. A joule, more specifically defined, is a physical displacement through one meter caused by one newton of force.

1. Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn
   Mars, Jupiter and Saturn
2. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune
   just Jupiter and Saturn

The four gas giants in the outer solar system are referred to as the "Jovian" planets. They're named for the first and biggest of them, Jupiter.

1. 0.5 pounds
   2.2 pounds
2. 100 grams
   both #2 and #3

Sorry, trick question! If you said "both #2 and #3," we got you ... a kilogram is 1000 grams, not 100. And 2.2 pounds, in the standard system.

1. small African cats
   craters on the moon
2. meteors
   units of measurement for radiation

The Leonids got their name from their apparent point of origin, the constellation Leo. The same can be said of the Perseids and the Aquarids, better-known meteor showers.

1. biochemistry
   genetics
2. pharmacy
   rocket science

This was probably pretty clear from the word "launch." A "launch window" is the period of time during which conditions are all right for a rocket to take off.

1. energy
   ether
2. mass
   plasma

This is one of the first things that students learn in basic physics: matter is converted to energy and energy to matter, but neither can be created nor destroyed. However, attempts to interpret this as evidence of life after death are best left to shows like "Ghost Adventures."

1. length
   time
2. weight
   patience

A micron is 1/1000 of a millimeter. That's tiny! It's mostly used to measure wavelengths of light.

1. niobium
   nitrogen
2. nihonium
   sodium

Sodium is "Na." It's nitrogen, which makes up about 78 percent of the earth's atmosphere, that has the simple symbol "N."

1. it screens out harmful UV radiation
   it converts nitrogen to oxygen
2. it allows cloud formation
   it provides resistance for high-altitude craft to propel themselves against

This is why the appearance of a hole in the ozone layer in the late 1980s was so disturbing. Without ozone, living things are much more prone to carcinogenic radiation.

1. dizziness
   meaningless speech
2. seeing patterns where none exist
   walking in a straight line

Pareidolia is responsible for people seeing religious figures -- often Jesus or the Virgin Mary -- in things like frost blossoms, refrigerator mold or burned toast. (OK, that last one was just on a TV sitcom!)

1. the material that gas clouds in space are made of
   the stuff that existed before the Big Bang
2. the early ocean that life on Earth came from
   a recipe in paleo diets

Evolution teaches that all life came from the ocean. But three billion years ago, the ocean wasn't the body of saltwater we know today, but a mix of water and chemical elements.

1. extremely advanced
   extremely powerful
2. subatomic, or in the smallest possible unit
   paradigm-changing

As a noun, a "quanta" is the smallest possible amount/unit of energy. As an adjective, it means "at a subatomic level." Unfortunately, it's been hijacked by pseudoscience to mean "radically world-changing," "impossible to explain by conventional science," or anything else the pseudoscientist needs to justify charging $100 for a two-hour seminar.

1. Brahe
   Von Braun
2. Van Allen
   Goodyear

These two belts are made up of charged particles, and start at about 700 kilometers above the Earth's surface. They were named for their discoverer, James Van Allen.

1. nine
   11
2. 15
   22

The number of dark spots on the sun's surface wax and wane. The number last peaked in 2011, so will peak again in 2022.

1. Neptune
   Jupiter
2. Mars
   Saturn

Titan, befitting its name, is the second-largest moon in the solar system. Only Jupiter's Ganymede is larger.

1. centimeters
   meters
2. millimeters
   nanometers

Yup, they're about 90 to 350 nanometers in length. Fortunately, they still can't slip past Earth's protective ozone layer.

1. hydrogen
   nitrogen
2. oxygen
   none of these

A vacuum is just that: an absence of matter. That's hard for us to conceive of, because our conception of "empty space" is actually air, a rich stew of nitrogen, oxygen, and other trace elements.

1. luminosity
   power
2. speed
   kinetic potential

A watt is 1 joule per second. It's a simple measure of power, not light, despite its association with light bulbs.

1. boron
   nitrogen
2. uranium
   flour, sugar, eggs and vanilla

You'll hear this term in stories about the nuclear-weapons development programs of smaller nations. The creation of yellowcake is a step toward having nuclear weapons. However, less purified yellowcake can be used for benign purposes, like domestic energy.

1. astronomy
   geology
2. seismology
   zoology

Magnitude measures the brightness of an astronomic body, usually a star. Lower magnitudes are brighter, with -1 being brighter than 0. This takes some time to get used to!