Answer:
- can be tested by many independent researchers - both
- based on observations of natural phenomena - both
- makes predictions about future events - both
- a tentative statement used to guide scientific investigations - hypothesis
- a well-established, highly reliable explanation - theory
Step-by-step explanation:
A hypothesis is like a guess you make before you do any research, and a theory is like a conclusion you draw after you see the data. A hypothesis can be right or wrong, but a theory is more likely to be right because it has evidence to back it up. A hypothesis can change if you find new data that contradicts it, but a theory is stable and consistent. For instance, the Cell Theory is a theory that tells us how living things work based on what we see under a microscope and in a lab, while a hypothesis might be an idea about why some animals have different kinds of skin, like fur or scales.
Sometimes, something can be both a theory and a hypothesis, depending on how much evidence it has and how many things it can explain. A theory is a hypothesis that has passed many tests and can explain a lot of things, and a hypothesis is a theory that has not done that yet. For example, the string theory is a hypothesis that tries to tell us what everything is made of, but we don't have any data to prove it. The cell theory, however, is a theory that tells us what living things are made of, and we have lots of data to prove it.