What Does the Moon Smell Like?: 151 Astounding Science Quizzes (18 page)

Which wine should you choose?

a) French champagne

b) German white wine

c) Portuguese rosé

d) Sardinian red wine

235

Wine with a Healthy Kick

Which wine should you choose?

A

a) French champagne

b) German white wine

c) Portuguese rosé

MMMM,

d) Sardinian red wine

MMMM!

CORRECT ANSWER:

d) Sardinian red wine

When red wines were tested, Sardinian wines, and wines from the southwest of France, had the most procyanidins by far — sometimes as much as 10

times the amount found in wines from elsewhere.

Why? They’re made the old-fashioned way. Wines

used to be fermented for three or four weeks to extract all the goodness from the skins and seeds, which contain the most beneficial compounds. These days, most winemakers don’t ferment the grapes for much longer than a week, not enough time to extract the full health kick from the grapes. Some grapes pack more procyanidins than others; Cabernet

Sauvignon and Nebbelio grapes tested the highest.

You pour yourself a glass of robust Sardinian wine brimming with procyanidins.

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Cheese, Please

Glass of wine in hand, you turn your attention to Q

a beautiful cheese tray by the wines and select a delectable cube of cheesy goodness. The relationship between wine and cheese is legendary, and they’re MMMM,

paired so often, it’s practically a marriage. Everyone knows that wine and cheese go together. That’s prob-MMMM!

ably why there have hardly been any scientific studies of their relationship until recently. When wine and cheese were taste tested together, what do you think the researchers found?

Cheese enhances the taste of . . .

a) all wine

b) cheap wine

c) red wine

d) white wine

237

Cheese, Please

Cheese enhances the taste of . . .

A

a) all wine

b) cheap wine

c) red wine

MMMM,

d) white wine

MMMM!

CORRECT ANSWER:

b) cheap wine

The taste of cheap wine was enhanced by cheese, but it turned out that cheese didn’t enhance the taste of good wines, as people have long believed. It’s the exact opposite, in fact. Cheese mutes the taste of wine. In the study, eight red wines and eight different cow’s milk cheeses were tasted together in all possible combinations. The wines were perceived to be less oaky, less sour, less astringent, and with less berry flavour when tasted while eating cheese. The only flavour that was enhanced by cheese was butter-iness, which was probably from the cheese and not from the wine. The muting of flavours might not be the best thing for appreciating the subtle nuances of a great wine, but it can definitely help a bottle of plonk taste better.

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Good Friends, Good Times

Everyone’s having a good time at the party. You’ve all Q

known one another since way back when, and you all get along, so there’s lots of talking, joking, and laughing. Time flies as the hors d’oeuvres, wine, and MMMM,

cheese are consumed, and before you know it, it’s time for the festive, sumptuous dinner. You all sit MMMM!

down at the table together to dig in.

How much will you eat?

a) 22% less than normal

b) 22% more than normal

c) 44% more than normal

d) the same amount you normally eat

239

Good Friends, Good Times

How much will you eat?

A

a) 22% less than normal

b) 22% more than normal

c) 44% more than normal

MMMM,

d) the same amount you normally eat

MMMM!

CORRECT ANSWER:

c) 44% more than normal

If you’re eating with people you know and love (or even just like), you can expect to pack away about 44% more food than you’d normally eat, maybe even more than 50% more. There’s something about good company that revs up our consumption. The more

people at the table, the more we eat. The more we’re enjoying ourselves, the more we eat. The tastier the food is, the more we eat and chances are, we won’t even be aware that we’re overeating.

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Winding Down with Caffeine

After dinner come the obligatory birthday cake and Q

toast to the birthday girl, followed by more fun and laughs. But now it’s starting to get late. You know that the party is winding down because your gracious MMMM,

hosts are serving coffee and tea. You could use a little caffeine, but not too much. You don’t want to be up MMMM!

all night.

Which has the least caffeine? A . . .

a) cup of filtered coffee

b) cup of black tea

c) cup of green tea

d) shot of espresso

241

Winding Down with Caffeine

Which has the least caffeine? A . . .

A

a) cup of filtered coffee

b) cup of black tea

c) cup of green tea

MMMM,

d) shot of espresso

MMMM!

CORRECT ANSWER:

d) shot of espresso

How much caffeine there is depends on how much

coffee or tea is used, what kind it is, how it’s brewed, or how long it’s steeped. In general, a shot of espresso has the least caffeine, about 40 milligrams. It seems counter-intuitive because it’s strong, but espresso is served in very small quantities, usually only about 30

millilitres (1 oz). Both black and green tea have more caffeine, about 50 to 100 milligrams per 177-millilitre (6 oz) cup. A cup of filtered coffee has biggest hit, anywhere from 80 to 175 milligrams of caffeine. You knock back a shot of espresso, say your thanks and goodbyes, and step out into a starry moonlit night.

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HIGH MOON

What Does the Moon Smell Like?

The only earthlings who know what the moon smells Q

like are the Apollo astronauts who walked on it. They couldn’t exactly take their helmets off to sniff the surface directly, but they still managed to get a noseful.

During every moonwalk, they got coated from head to toe in fine, sticky moondust. Once they were back inside their lunar module, when their helmets came off, they could smell the moon.

What does the moon smell like?

a) burnt gunpowder

b) green cheese

c) new paper money

d) wet dog

243

What Does the Moon Smell Like?

What does the moon smell like?

A

a) burnt gunpowder

b) green cheese

c) new paper money

HIGH

d) wet dog

MOON

CORRECT ANSWER:

a) burnt gunpowder

All the astronauts who got a whiff of moondust

described the smell the same way. According to

Apollo 16 pilot Charlie Duke, not only did moondust smell like burnt gunpowder, it tasted like it too.

That’s odd, and not just because someone knows

what burnt gunpowder
tastes
like. No, it’s odd because moondust and gunpowder have almost nothing in common. Back on Earth, in the lab, the

mystery deepened. The moondust didn’t smell like much of anything at all. So, what’s up with moondust? There are several theories, and lots of

speculation, but no one knows for sure. Scientists will have to wait until the next series of moon missions to sniff out the secrets of the moon’s intriguing scent.

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Follow the Row of Craters and

Hang a Right

The first moon mission focused on science was

Q

Apollo 15. The crew was all Air Force pilots, but they studied geology for years, so that they could bring back the kinds of moon rocks that the scientists HIGH

wanted to study. The astronauts pored over maps of MOON

their landing site, and burned the images of the nearby terrain onto their brains. The mental maps would help them to recognize targeted rock collecting areas once they were on the surface, but more importantly, it would make it possible to pilot the lunar module to the landing site. They had to follow a row of four craters that led to the spot. The last crater in the row was called Index.

What were the other three craters called?

a) Alpha, Beta, Gamma

b) Footnote, Glossary, Reference

c) Matthew, Mark, Luke

d) Pinkie, Ring, Middle

245

Follow the Row of Craters and

Hang a Right

What were the other three craters called?

A

a) Alpha, Beta, Gamma

b) Footnote, Glossary, Reference

c) Matthew, Mark, Luke

HIGH

d) Pinkie, Ring, Middle

MOON

CORRECT ANSWER:

c) Matthew, Mark, Luke

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Index pointed the way to the landing site. The astronauts wanted to name the fourth crater John. NASA, however, had recently been sued by an atheist, after the Apollo 8 crew read a passage from Genesis while orbiting the Earth on Christmas Eve in 1968. Madalyn Murray O’Hair’s

lawsuit was eventually dismissed, but NASA opted to forego John, and go for Index instead. It made sense because Index Crater was closest to the landing site.

Another crater visited by the astronauts, Spur, yielded one of the oldest moon rocks ever found. Back on Earth, it gave scientists a glimpse of what the solar system was like 4.5 billion years ago, when the moon was still forming. Ironically, it was dubbed “The Genesis Rock” by the media, and the name stuck —

and no one sued.

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High Lunacy

About 295 kilograms (650 lb) of the rocks, core sam-Q

ples, pebbles, sand, and dirt collected on the moon are locked away in a big vault at the Johnson Space Center. Even amateur felons would know not to

HIGH

target the big vault, but there was a safe in a lab at MOON

the space centre that proved to be irresistible to three student interns. The safe contained tiny samples from every Apollo mission. Ka-ching! The interns hatched a devious plan to steal the moon samples and sell them for $1 million. But before they stole anything, they cunningly tried to line up buyers by advertising “Priceless Moon Rocks Now Available!!!”

What happened after that?

a) A photographer tipped off the authorities.

b) They stole the moon rocks then tried to sell them to undercover agents.

c) They were busted on the 33rd anniversary of the first moon landing.

d) all of the above

247

High Lunacy

What happened after that?

A

a) A photographer tipped off the authorities.

b) They stole the moon rocks then tried to sell them to undercover agents.

HIGH

c) They were busted on the 33rd anniversary of the first MOON

moon landing.

d) all of the above

CORRECT ANSWER:

d) all of the above

Posing as “Orb Robinson,” one of the interns flogged the moon rocks to a mineralogy club in Belgium, where photographer/rock hound Axel Emmermann

grew suspicious enough to contact the FBI. Undercover agents posed as buyers, and made a deal with

“Orb.” On the night of July 13, 2002, the interns entered the Johnson Space Center using their pass-cards, and broke into the lab. But since they couldn’t open the 272-kilogram (600 lb) safe, they cleverly loaded it onto a cart, and wheeled it out of the building, and into a truck. A week later, on the 33rd anniversary of the first moon landing, the moon rocks deal was set to go down in an Italian restaurant in Orlando, Florida. But instead of driving off into the sunset with a wad of cash, the interns were driven to the police station with nothing but heartache. They were astronaut hopefuls who might even have made it into the space program. You have to wonder —

what
were
they thinking?

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The Great Ongoing

Moon Experiment

An hour before the end of their final moonwalk, the Q

first astronauts on the moon, Apollo 11’s Neil

Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, set up an experiment in the Sea of Tranquility. It’s the only experiment left on HIGH

the moon by the Apollo missions that’s still running MOON

today. From it, we’ve learned that the moon is spiralling away from the Earth. By how much? Well, let’s say that the next moon landing mission is in 2019, and that when it’s launched the Earth and moon are in the same positions relative to one another as they were during the Apollo 11 launch.

How much farther would the future astronauts

have to fly?

a) 2.5 cm (1 in)

b) 2 m (6 ft)

c) 500 m (1640 ft)

d) 1 km (0.6 miles)

249

The Great Ongoing

Moon Experiment

How much farther would the future astronauts

A

have to fly?

a) 2.5 cm (1 in)

b) 2 m (6 ft)

HIGH

c) 500 m (1640 ft)

MOON

d) 1 km (0.6 miles)

CORRECT ANSWER:

b) 2 m (6 ft)

Did you think it would be farther? The moon’s

average distance from Earth is increasing by about 3.8 centimetres (1.5 in) a year. So in the 50 years from 1969 to 2019, the moon would only be about 2 metres (6 ft) farther away. We know these things because of the four Lunar Laser Retroreflector Arrays left on the moon by the Apollo missions. Each array consists of a 60-centimetre (2 ft) wide panel holding 100 mirrors.

Scientists on Earth ping the mirrors with laser telescopes. The mirrors were designed to send the pulse straight back to where it originated. The returning pulse is usually just a single photon, but it’s enough to measure the moon’s distance to within a few centimetres. So how far away is the moon anyway?