Exam 8: The Terrestrial Planets and Earths Moon

The smoother, less cratered surfaces of the Moon resulted from those areas being protected by the Moon's proximity to Earth.

Figure 3 -Which layer in Figure 3 represents the Earth's liquid mantle?

List the names of the four layers of Earth's interior shown in the figure below going from the outer layer to the innermost layer, and designate whether they are solid or liquid.

Which terrestrial object shows the least evidence of recent volcanic activity?

Which is NOT a reason that we suspect Mars once had liquid water on its surface?

Suppose that two planets of the same size formed from the same material. If planet A had differentiated and planet B had not, how would samples of their surface rock differ? Explain why.

Volcanoes on Earth typically occur in the middle of oceans where two tectonic plates are spreading apart.

How did the radioactive heating of Earth vary from when it was first formed 4.6 billion years ago until today?

Permanent magnetism in the Earth's solid iron core is the source of Earth's magnetic field.

Earth's magnetic axis and its spin axis are not aligned.

Suppose an earthquake occurs on an imaginary planet. Scientists on the other side of the planet detect primary waves but not secondary waves after the quake occurs. This suggests that:

Differentiation refers to materials that are separate based on their:

Mars has many large shield volcanoes because it does not have plate tectonics.

Based on the assumption that a liquid, conducting core and rapid rotation are both required for a magnetic dynamo to operate, which terrestrial planets would you expect to have magnetic fields?

If you obtained a sample of a meteorite and determined the abundances of uranium (²³⁸U) and lead (²⁰⁷Pb) in it, and found that for every 1 uranium atom there were 15 lead atoms, then what would the age of this rock be? Note that this form of uranium decays to this form of lead with a half-life of 700 million years. For simplicity, you can assume that there was no lead in the rock when it originally formed.

The lithosphere of a planet is:

Which planet would you expect to have a larger molten core, a planet of Earth's size or a planet that had half the radius of Earth? Explain why.

Describe two reasons why we know that the Earth's magnetic field cannot be a result of permanent magnetism in a solid iron core.

Which of the following is NOT a requirement for a planetary magnetic dynamo?