Quiz Category: 10 New Science Trivia Questions

Benzene is found in the air, contained in motor fuels, and used by industrial producers to make plastics and resins. Exposure to high levels of the chemical can cause illness, including an increased risk of leukemia.

Is there benzene in my shampoo?

Procter & Gamble recalled 32 of its dry shampoo and conditioner products on Dec. 21, 2021. after detecting benzene in some of them. The voluntary recall includes aerosol products from Pantene, Herbal Essences, Old Spice, and others. P&G sold the recalled products in stores and online in the United States. The company stated that benzene is not an ingredient in any of its products.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s largest and most powerful space telescope, a successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. The $10-billion observatory rocketed from French Guiana on South America’s northeastern coast on Dec. 25, 2021. The Webb Telescope is on a million miles (1.6 million kilometers) search to find light from the first stars, galaxies, and hints of life.

Who was James Webb?

James E. Webb was the first NASA Administrator, serving from Feb. 1961 to Oct.1968.

Flue effect, also known as stack effect or chimney effect, is when heated air rises in a shaft, like the one created by two open doors at the Jan. 10, 2022, Bronx fire. Seventeen people were killed from inhaling smoke pouring through a malfunctioning door and spreading up to the top of the 19-story building.

Solar flares are powerful bursts of energy from the Sun. According to NASA, flares and solar eruptions can impact radio communications, electric power grids, navigation signals and pose risks to spacecraft and astronauts. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which watches the Sun constantly, captured an image of a mid-level solar flare on Jan. 20, 2022. Watch it here.

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe took its first visible-light images of the surface of Venus from space in July 2020. The spacecraft collected more pictures in a later flyby, creating a video of Venus’s entire nightside. An analysis of the images and video, published on Feb. 9, 2022, in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, adds to scientists’ understanding of the planet dubbed Earth’s twin, revealing Venus’s distinctive features like continental regions, plains, and plateaus.

Aurora of the sea is a natural phenomenon where plankton blooms glow in blue and green after nightfall. The light is activated by the movement of waves, swimming fish, and even footprints in the wet sand. The phenomenon is caused by plankton and phytoplankton species blooms, some of which use bioluminescence to distract predators.

Ocean snow is a shower of usually biological debris that falls from higher in the water - sometimes for weeks - before reaching the ocean's bottom. For millions of years, the debris has delivered flecks from plant and animal remains mucus, dust, microbes, and the ocean's carbon to the seafloor.

What's wrong with marine snow?

An April 4, 2022, report in the New York Times identifies marine snowfall as increasingly being contaminated by microplastics, eventually settling on the seafloor in a layer of plastic that might affect Earth's cooling process.

A nationwide study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issued on Apr. 26, 2022, shows that some 58% of the U.S. population (and more than 75% of younger children) have been infected with the coronavirus since the pandemic started.

US Census Bureau data released on Apr. 6, 2022, shows the median age of new mothers has risen to 30 from 27 three decades ago, the highest in history. Between ages 20 and 24, the fertility rate declined by almost 43%, and between 25 and 29, it dropped by more than 22%. Meanwhile, fertility rates increased by 67% for women aged 35-39 and 132% for 40-44. Based on the Census Bureau analysis of National Center for Health Statistics data, foreign-born new mothers have seen the most significant increases in median age, from 27 to 32.

The emperor is the world's largest penguin and one of only two penguin species endemic to Antarctica. The emperor penguin is at severe risk of extinction in the next 30 to 40 years as a result of climate change, according to biologist Marcela Libertelli of the Argentine Antarctic Institute (IAA).