The Globe’s 2019 science quiz: Test your knowledge of the world’s burning questions

a. The Event Horizon Telescope is a global network of radio observatories that collectively produced an image of the black hole in silhouette within a swirling ring of hot gas.

d. Tardigrades, also called water bears or moss piglets, are eight-legged microscopic animals deemed to be among the most indestructible creatures on Earth. Thousands of them were on-board the robotic lander in a dormant state, which may have allowed them to survive the lander’s demise.

c. Peebles was born in 1935 in the Winnipeg suburb and graduated from the University of Manitoba in 1958.

b. In case you missed it, 2019 was the International Year of the Periodic Table, largely credited to Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev who published an early version of the table in 1869.

a. The study found nine million square kilometres available for trees, which is just over the total land area of Brazil (8.5 million square kilometres).

a. Juan left eight dead in the region and caused $200-million worth of damage, including to Halifax’s iconic Point Pleasant park where it felled three-quarters of the park’s trees.

a. MOPITT was the first instrument in space to measure carbon monoxide in Earth’s atmosphere, which is a tracer for a range of pollutants.

c. Twice as much for all of Canada, but in the Arctic the magnitude of the warming is even more pronounced.

b. Many of the fish and reptile specimens at the site appear to have been tossed together, as though by violent waves that would have shook the region minutes after the asteroid impact. The specimens also bear signs of impact debris raining down from above.

b. The crabs often enter discarded plastic containers and are unable to escape.

b. The microscopic traces of a fungus-like organism date back almost one billion years.

c. The estimate is partly based on a 2011 Dalhousie University-led study that estimates the total number of all species currently living on Earth as 8.7 million.

a. The 71-year-old said she did not recall needing painkillers and her experience of childbirth was “pleasant.”

d. Amid surging outbreaks of measles, the researchers noted that their study - the largest of its kind to date - strongly supports the conclusion that vaccination for measles mumps and rubella (MMR) does not increase the risk of autism.

b. The contrarian analysis prompted criticism from other scientists and also drew attention to the lead author’s previous ties to food industry funding.

d. Cat owners, as a group, were not statistically better than others at guessing if cats’ expressions indicated positive or negative emotions.

c. Google scientists originally claimed that it would take 10,000 years for a supercomputer to do what their fledgling quantum processor accomplished in 200 seconds. Critics took issue with this claim, but whether it won by minutes or by millennia, Sycamore was fastest.

b. Researchers concluded that people who returned the wallets were likely motivated by altruism and an aversion to viewing themselves as thieves.

c. The well known statistical tool for determining if an experiment has measured a real effect is so misused that it should be retired, the paper’s authors argued.

d. The program, developed for Samsung, also worked on photos of Marilyn Monroe, Salvador Dali and other figures. Because of the method’s implications for “deep fake” videos, the data science firm Altmetric judged the achievement to be the most discussed research result of the year.