11 December 2021 | New Scientist | 55Answers
Quick quiz #131
Answers1 Standard candles
2 Velociraptor
3 Pakistan. It has more
than 7000 glaciers
4 15
5 The cosmic microwave
background, which is remnant
radiation from the big bangQuick crossword #97
AnswersACROSS 1 Crossword puzzle,
9 At rest, 10 Essexite,
11 Angstrom, 14 Desert,
17 White cockatoo,
20 Research paper, 23 System,
25 Sciatica, 28 Thinking,
29 Errors, 30 Colorectal polypDOWN 2 Retina, 3 Seeds,
4 Water, 5 Rheum, 6 Postdoc,
7 Z-axis, 8 Electrode, 12 Taiga,
13 Oleic, 15 Enter, 16 Parasitic,
17 Wasps, 18 OAPEC, 19 Kappa,
21 Rimfire, 22 Scurvy, 24 Tango,
25 Sight, 26 Ideal, 27 Torso#142 Simultaneous
pleasure
Solutions1 The pen is 95p, the pencil 5p.
The trap of instinctively answering
90p/10p has become a notorious
case study in psychology.2 Twelve cows, eight chickens.Tom Gauld
for New Scientist
Geraint Day
Swindon, Wiltshire, UK
It is almost certainly a coincidence
that there are two constellations,
parts of which seem to resemble
each other, in this case the Big
Dipper (part of the constellation of
Ursa Major) and the Little Dipper
(in Ursa Minor). The resemblance
isn’t exact though. It is sometimes
said that the arrangement of six of
the brightest stars in the Pleiades
cluster in the constellation Taurus
bears a resemblance to the Little
Dipper, albeit with smaller angular
size than either of the named
Dipper patterns.
David Collins
Harpenden, Hertfordshire, UK
Given a clear, dark sky and
reasonable eyesight, you can see
thousands of stars. They appear
at random places with random
brightness. If you asked a
computer to explore the sky
and to look for dippers, allowing
for some slight variation in the
pattern, you would surely find
dozens or even hundreds – large,
small, in different orientations.
And the same would apply to
any other imaginary shape we
have imposed on the sky.Richard Swifte
Darmstadt, Germany
The constellations comprise stars
that can be seen easily with the
naked eye and that happen to lie
in roughly the same line of sight.
But the actual distances to these
stars can vary a lot, ranging from
less than 10 light years to over 100.
If our solar system were in a
different location, we would
view the stars from a different
perspective and our familiar
constellations would be replaced
by quite different chance
groupings. As it is, the stars are
moving through space as they
orbit around the galactic centre,
so their relative positions areconstantly changing. In a few
million years, our familiar
constellations will most likely
have dissipated and been
replaced by new ones.The existence of time
Aside from our perception, how can
we know that time exists? (cont’d)Jonathan Kerr
Ripley, Surrey, UK
To stop the word “time” being
ambiguous, the question is better
put as: How can we know that
motion through time exists?
From relativity (and
experiment), we know that two
objects that move differently –
one shot through space, one left
on Earth – have permanent age
differences when brought back
together. These last billions of
years. Even dust grains that move
differently for a few seconds do
this, throughout the universe,
constantly. Because it seems
the two objects somehow aged
differently, this strongly supports
motion through time existing. ❚“ If you asked a
computer to explore
the sky and to look for
dippers, you would
surely find dozens
or even hundreds”