Matter of the Universe:

1. The first to form at the birth of the universe were countless particles much smaller than atoms such as quarks. True/ false?

2. When some of the particles fused together they formed the lightest and simplest of elements which makes up almost 100 per cent of the stars and cloud. What are they?

3. How are larger atoms such as beyllium, carbon and oxygen made?
4. What is anti-matter?
5. What holds everything together?
6.What are particles?

Tropical rain forests:

1. How rich are the rainforests?
2. What is an air-plant?
3. Where are the rainforests?
4. How tall are the biggest rainforest trees?
5. How fast are the rainforests being destroyed?
6. What do we get from rainforests?

The Sun:

1. What is the photosphere?
2. How old is the Sun?
3. What is the chromosphere?
4. Higher above the chromosphere are giant tongues of hot gases called prominences. True/false?

5. What are solar flares?
6. What is solar wind?

[Answers]

Matter of the Universe:

1. True

2. Hydrogen and helium

3. They are made when nuclear reactions inside stars force the nuclei of helium atoms together.

4. Anti-matter is the mirror image of ordinary matter. If matter and anti-matter meet, they annihilate each other. Fortunately there is no anti-matter on Earth.

5. What holds everything together are the four invisible forces. Two of them - gravity and electromagnetism are familiar in every day life. The other two, the strong and weak nuclear forces are not familiar to us because they operate only inside the invisibly small nucleus of the atom, holding it all together.

6. They are the basic units of matter that make up everyday objects. There are hundreds of kinds of particles, but all, apart from the atom and molecules, are too small to see even with the most powerful microscope.

Tropical rainforests:

1. They are the richest habitats on Earth containing 50 per cent of the world's plants. Just 2.5 acres of tropical rainforests can contain 600 species of trees.

2. An air-plant grows without anchoring itself to the ground. Air-plants are common in some tropical forests. They get the moisture from the damp air.

3. The world's main areas of tropical rainforests are in South and Central America, in West and Central Africa, in Southeast Asia and in northern Queensland, Australia. The world's largest rainforest is around Brazil's Amazon River and also along the foothills of tropical Andes Mountains.

4. The main canopy of the rainforest develops at around 30m with occasional taller trees (known as emergents) rising above these to an incredible 50 m or more.

5. Rainforests are being destroyed at a speed of 28 hectares (70 acres) a minute. Every year an area the size of the state of Wisconsin is lost or badly damaged.

6. We get many things, including timber, Brazil nuts, fruits, rubber, rattan (a kind of palm from which furniture is made) coconuts and medicines apart from the oxygen from the trees.

The Sun:

1. The photosphere is a sea of boiling gas. It gives the heat and light we experience on Earth.

2. Scientists believe that the Sun is a middle-aged star which was probably formed about 4.6 billion years ago. It is expected to burn for another five billion years and eventually die in a blaze so bright that the Earth will be scorched right out of existence.

3. The chromosphere is a tenuous layer through which dart tongues called spicules, are visible, making it look like a flaming forest.

4. True. The prominences which are made of hot hydrogen 1000 32,000km into space.

5. Eruptions from the Sun's surface that fountain into space with the energy of one million atom bombs for about five minutes, are known as solar flares.

6. The Solar wind is the stream of radioactive particles constantly blowing out from the Sun at hundreds of kilometres per second. The Earth is protected from the Solar wind by its magnetic field. But at the Poles, the Solar wind interacts with the Earth's atmosphere to create the aurora borealis or northern lights.