Free quiz · 8 questions · Warm-up to Boss

Space quiz

How well do you really know Space? These 8 questions start easy and end with a Boss round. There are no multiple choice options: you type what you know, and every answer is checked against the key facts.

60 seconds a question, one 2x boost, and a leaderboard. Playing with friends writes a fresh set of Space questions for your group.

The questions

1. Warm-up

   Name Earth’s nearest star and give the two forms of energy it sends us.

   Show the answer

   • The star is the Sun.
   • It sends light.
   • It sends heat.
2. Warm-up

   Name the force that keeps planets in orbit around the Sun, and name the two objects whose attraction it describes.

   Show the answer

   • The force is gravity.
   • The Sun and a planet attract each other.
   • Gravity acts between objects with mass.
3. Warm-up

   Which planet has the Solar System’s most striking rings, and what are those rings mostly made of?

   Show the answer

   • Saturn has the most prominent ring system.
   • Saturn’s rings are mostly water ice.
   • The rings also contain rocky material and dust.
4. Easy

   What galaxy is our Solar System part of, and what broad shape does that galaxy have?

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   • Our Solar System is in the Milky Way.
   • The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy.
   • More specifically, it is a barred spiral galaxy.
5. Easy

   The Moon seems to reshape itself each month—what changes in its appearance, and what shifting Sun-Moon-Earth view causes that change?

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   • The Moon goes through phases, from new to full and back.
   • The Sun always lights about half the Moon.
   • As the Moon orbits Earth, we see different portions of its sunlit half.
6. Easy

   Olympus Mons towers over its world: what kind of landform is it, and which planet is it on?

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   • It is a volcano.
   • It is a shield volcano.
   • It is on Mars.
   • It is the Solar System’s largest known volcano.
7. Medium

   At a black hole’s ultimate boundary, what is its technical name, and what happens to light trying to escape from inside it?

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   • The boundary is called the event horizon.
   • It marks the point beyond which escape is impossible.
   • Not even light can escape from inside it.
8. Boss

   What condition of the early universe does the cosmic microwave background reveal, and what do its tiny variations help explain?

   Show the answer

   • It shows the early universe was hot and dense.
   • Its tiny temperature variations reflect small differences in the early universe.
   • Those differences helped seed the formation of galaxies and other large-scale structure.

How scoring works

• Each question has 2 or 3 key facts. Each one earns full, half or no credit, so a wrong answer scores zero.
• Later questions are worth more, fast answers earn a bonus, and great answers in a row build a streak.
• A famous myth or a clear factual error halves the points.

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Or pick any topic you like and play it with friends.