阅读篇：SAT考试每日一题 21

>>SAT考试：阅读篇：SAT考试每日一题 21

>>SAT考试精品辅导班

Four billion years ago, Earth's continents began taking shape. Scientists long held that this process unfolded gradually. It would have taken millions of years for granite, the primary component of the continental crust, to form in the mantle and migrate to the upper crust, they reasoned. But new research suggests that these events may have proceeded at rather a different pace. According to a report published in the journal Nature, the emergence of granite occurred by way of swift, dynamic and possibly catastrophic events lasting from 1,000 to 100,000 years.

Geologist Alexander Cruden of the University of Toronto and his colleagues turned to experimental studies—melting rock samples, for example—to explore how granite magma forms and how fast it can move. Their results proved surprising. "In the past we thought that granite magma, which cools and crystallizes to form very large granite intrusions, moved up through kilometers of crust as large, solid blobs at rates of about a meter per year," Cruden says. "But we've found that magma actually has quite low viscosity and is relatively runny. Because it is runny, it is able to channel its way from the mantle and lower crust through fractures and cracks that are as small as one meter thick."

According to this model, granite intrusions in Greenland or the Canadian Shield, depending on their size, would have taken only thousands of years to form, which is extraordinarily fast from a geological point of view, Cruden notes.

It can reasonably be inferred that one reason scientists thought the continental crust took millions of years to form was that they had ________

A.disregarded the age of granite found in Greenland and Canada.

B.overestimated the viscosity of granite magma.

C.miscalculated the size of granite intrusions.

D.underestimated the thickness of cracks in the lower crust.

答案：B

解析：

Choice B is the best answer. Cruden presents the finding that "magma actually has quite a low viscosity and is relatively runny" as the information that changed scientists' understanding of how long it took magma to form the continental crust. The discussion of magma's viscosity suggests that scientists originally believed the continental crust took millions of years to form because they thought magma was thicker than it is and could not have flowed through the cracks in the lower crust, and that it instead solidified quickly and then moved very slowly through the mantle and lower crust as a solid.

相约坦途网SAT考试频道，我们每日一练，不见不散，为考试高分冲刺！