With enormous effort, a team of astronomers manages to collect enough light from a galaxy far, far away to produce a spectrum. That spectrum has lines from the elements carbon, silicon, and sulfur. This tells the team that
A) the galaxy must be closer to us than 1 billion light years
B) the galaxy must contain a quasar
C) the galaxy must have had an entire generation of stars that was born, lived, and died
D) the galaxy must be a massive elliptical galaxy
E) what they are seeing is not a galaxy at all, but the remnant of one supernova

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The presence of spectral lines from carbon, silicon, and sulfur indicates that the galaxy has had at least one generation of stars that were born, lived, and died, as these elements are produced in the cores of high-mass stars and released into space when those stars die. This means that the galaxy is not a remnant of a single supernova or a quasar. The distance to the galaxy cannot be determined from this information alone, and there is no indication that the galaxy is a massive elliptical.

With Enormous Effort, a Team of Astronomers Manages to Collect