2019新SAT考试官方指南阅读中心题型解析1

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P646——Section 3

时光旅行

10. ANSWERS AND EXPLANATIONS

Explanation for Correct Answer B :

Choice (B) is correct. According to the passage, astronomers who see Andromeda though their telescopes see it as it was two million years ago because that is how long it takes light from the galaxy Andromeda to reach Earth. To give the reader a vivid idea of how much things can change in two million years, the author points out that the long-extinct humanlike primate Australopithecus was alive on Earth two million years ago.

Explanation for Incorrect Answer A :

Choice (A) is incorrect. The fact that Australopithecus was alive on Earth two million years ago indicates that there has been an evolutionary change in at least the biological world during that period. But that passage is not concerned with such progression in itself. The point that the author wants to make is how different the world of the distant past is from the world we know today.

Explanation for Incorrect Answer C :

Choice (C) is incorrect. That Australopithecus was alive two million years ago is certainly not something astronomers discovered. The author says nothing to suggest that what astronomers do when they see Andromeda through their telescopes is isolate a particular moment in early time. Nor does the author commend astronomers on their work. The point the author is making with the reference to Australopithecus is simply how ancient the images are that astronomers are now receiving from Andromeda.

Explanation for Incorrect Answer D :

Choice (D) is incorrect. The author mentions both Andromeda and Australopithecus as a way of vividly making the point that the distant past is very different from the present. Moreover, two million years is how long it takes light to reach from the Andromeda galaxy, not how long ago the Andromeda galaxy was discovered.

Explanation for Incorrect Answer E :

Choice (E) is incorrect. The author mentions Australopithecus to emphasize the length of the time it takes for light to travel between Earth and Andromeda. Nothing in this passage or the rest of the paragraph discusses the age of the universe or the length of time humans have lived.

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11. ANSWERS AND EXPLANATIONS

Explanation for Correct Answer A :

Choice (A) is correct. The author begins by observing that when astronomers see Andromeda through their telescopes, they “see it as it was two million years ago” (lines 2-3). He then points out that two million years ago on Earth was about the time of Australopithecus and remarks that “it is too bad we can’t turn things around and observe Earth from some cozy planet in Andromeda” (lines 6-7). Since scientists would very much like to know more about Australopithecus and other early humanlike primates, this remark is a way of saying that scientists would like to have some way of observing events that occurred on Earth before these primates became extinct.

Explanation for Incorrect Answer B :

Choice (B) is incorrect. The passage is concerned with the idea of time travel, not space travel. And since it takes light two million years to travel between Andromeda and Earth, the idea that people could actually go to a planet in Andromeda is not one that the author, as a scientist, is likely to take seriously.

Explanation for Incorrect Answer C :

Choice (C) is incorrect. The point of wishing we could observe Earth from a planet in Andromeda is that we would see Earth as it was two million years ago. The passage does not suggest that we would be on that planet in Andromeda to study Andromeda, or that there would be interesting comparisons to be made with Earth if we did.

Explanation for Incorrect Answer D :

Choice (D) is incorrect. Andromeda is so far away that it takes light two million years to travel between it and Earth. Thus, the idea that people could actually get to a planet in Andromeda is not one that, as a scientist, the author is likely to take seriously.

Explanation for Incorrect Answer E :

Choice (E) is incorrect. It can be inferred from the passage that both Andromeda and Earth are more that two million years old. But the passage says nothing that bears on their relative ages.

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12. ANSWERS AND EXPLANATIONS

Explanation for Correct Answer E :

Choice (E) is correct. The author describes being fascinated by the idea of time travel. To make this fascination understandable he gives two examples of what time travel could make possible: modern medical knowledge could be taken back to fourteenth century Europe "to stop the spread of plague," and one could go forward "to the twenty-third century, where people take there annual holidays in space stations."

Explanation for Incorrect Answer A :

Choice (A) is incorrect. The author suggests that some novels about time travel have fascinated him, but he says nothing to indicate what the specific themes of those novels might have been.

Explanation for Incorrect Answer B :

Choice (B) is incorrect. The reference to space stations does suggest a view about what the future might bring. But no alternative view is suggested. The reference to the plague has to do with the past, not with the future.

Explanation for Incorrect Answer C :

Choice (C) is incorrect. In lines 16-35, the author presents the scientific consequences of time travel quite seriously. There is no indication that he finds those consequences ridiculous or scoffs at them.

Explanation for Incorrect Answer D :

Choice (D) is incorrect. The idea of being able to stop the spread of the plague in fourteenth-century Europe is presented as something that anyone might find interesting. There is no indication that the author believes scientists would find the idea more interesting than anyone else would. In fact, the author strongly suggests that most physicists would not like the idea at all because it would involve a "causality violation."

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13. ANSWERS AND EXPLANATIONS

Explanation for Correct Answer B :

Choice (B) is correct. The first two paragraphs present time travel as an attractive idea. In the third paragraph, the author switches gears and discusses some of the theoretical difficulties time travel would present. Time travel, the author says, would run counter to the laws of physics. This is the kind of claim that can be made with a lot more authority by a scientist than by someone who has no scientific training. So by introducing himself as a scientist before making these claims, the author presents himself as someone with the authority to speak on these matters.

Explanation for Incorrect Answer A :

Choice (A) is incorrect. Even though the author traces his interest in time travel back to his childhood, when he became old enough to read science fiction, this fact in itself would not indicate that scientific training. Also personal interest in a topic does not necessarily make one an authority.

Explanation for Incorrect Answer C :

Choice (C) is incorrect. Whatever general appeal certain forms of literature—including science fiction—might have cannot be explained by the fact that the author of this passage is a scientist.

Explanation for Incorrect Answer D :

Choice (D) is incorrect. The author seems to enjoy at least some science fiction. So it is unlikely that he would be interested in provoking those who defend it.

Explanation for Incorrect Answer E :

Choice (E) is incorrect. Being a scientist might help the author explain the term "causality violation," but describing himself as a scientist does not help illustrate the term.

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14. ANSWERS AND EXPLANATIONS

Explanation for Correct Answer C :

Choice (C) is correct. In lines 16-35 the author discusses some theoretical problems associated with the idea of time travel. The mechanics of space travel do not raise any of these problems and are not mentioned anywhere in the passage.

Explanation for Incorrect Answer A :

Choice (A) is incorrect. The issue of anticipatory knowledge of events is addressed in lines 18-20.

Explanation for Incorrect Answer B :

Choice (B) is incorrect. The issue of belief in a deterministic universe is addressed in lines 30-35.

Explanation for Incorrect Answer D :

Choice (D) is incorrect. The issue of cause-and-effect relationships is addressed in lines 21-22.

Explanation for Incorrect Answer E :

Choice (E) is incorrect. The issue of differential equations based on known forces is addressed in lines 28-32.

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15. ANSWERS AND EXPLANATIONS

Explanation for Correct Answer B :

Choice (B) is correct. The author describes the first mechanical clocks as "marking off time in crisp, regular intervals" (lines 38-39). What surprised people about these clocks, he suggests, is that they showed time as independent of "their own mental and physiological processes" (lines 40-41). So if people had always perceived time as "composed of discrete, uniform intervals," the author's assumption about the impact of mechanical clocks would be undermined.

Explanation for Incorrect Answer A :

Choice (A) is incorrect. Being aware of time in connection with mental and physiological processes is not the same as being aware of time "on a physical level." The author does assume that people had been oblivious (that is, not aware) of time as something outside of their own mental and physiological processes. So the assumption that people were oblivious to time on a physical level is part of the author's argument and does nothing to undermine it.

Explanation for Incorrect Answer C :

Choice (C) is incorrect. The author suggests that before clocks were invented people were surprised "to discover that time flowed outside their mental and physiological processes" (lines 39-41). It does not matter whether their concern about time was necessary or unnecessary. All that matters is that their understanding of time was limited before clocks were invented.

Explanation for Incorrect Answer D :

Choice (D) is incorrect. The author assumes that for any given person, body time does not consist of just one uniform rhythm. Rather, he assumes that each person always has a number of different body rhythms, each marking off a different body time. But, according to the author, as long as there is more than one rhythm and some of the rhythms are variable, it does not matter if these different rhythms and their changes are completely predictable.

Explanation for Incorrect Answer E :

Choice (E) is incorrect. The author assumes that body time does not move at a constant rate. If it did, the contrast he wants to make between body time and uniform clock time would be undermined.

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16. ANSWERS AND EXPLANATIONS

Explanation for Correct Answer D :

Choice (D) is correct. In lines 43-44 the passage says that the human body "contains its own exquisite timepieces, all with their own separate rhythms." The next sentence says, "There are the alpha waves in the brain; another clock is the heart" (lines 44-45). So the author mentions the brain and the heart as examples of the body's different internal clocks.

Explanation for Incorrect Answer A :

Choice (A) is incorrect. The author is drawing a contrast between the body's physiological "clocks" and mechanical timepieces in order to support the view that there is "something very personal about time" (lines 36-37). But except to note that the body's physiological clocks all have "their separate rhythms" (line 44), the author does not mention the rhythmical qualities of timepieces, let alone demonstrate them.

Explanation for Incorrect Answer B :

Choice (B) is incorrect. The author mentions mechanical clocks and contrasts the image of time they present with time as people experience it in their own bodies. But the passage is not otherwise concerned with the historical significance of mechanical clocks. The brain and the heart are mentioned as examples of the body's physiological clocks. The discussion of links between people's sense of time and their physiological processes is included in support of the author's broader point that "there is something very personal about time" (lines 36-37).

Explanation for Incorrect Answer C :

Choice (C) is incorrect. The author mentions the brain and the heart to illustrate the point that there are many different bodily clocks, each with a different, variable rhythm. Emphasizing the interaction between the heart and the brain would go against this point.

Explanation for Incorrect Answer E :

Choice (E) is incorrect. Nothing in the passage suggests that anyone believes that organic processes are particularly precise. So there is no mystery of unusual precision to be explained.

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17. ANSWERS AND EXPLANATIONS

Explanation for Correct Answer E :

Choice (E) is correct. "Ruthless" means roughly the same as merciless. To say that someone is ruthless or merciless is to say that appealing to them to stop something they have begun, or even to proceed more gently, has no chance of success. In other words, they are "relentless." So when the author talks about the "ruthless clocks that regulate aging" (line 46), he is using the word to suggest that the process of aging cannot be stopped, that it is relentless.

Explanation for Incorrect Answer A :

Choice (A) is incorrect. The "clocks that regulate aging" (line 46) are described as both mysterious and ruthless. But these are two different qualities, only one of which—"mysterious"—produces bewilderment in people. The other one—"ruthless"—may cause people to feel hopeless or powerless, since no effective appeal is possible. The author does suggest that people are bewildered by the prospect of aging, but the word that carries this suggestion is "mysterious," not ruthless.

Explanation for Incorrect Answer B :

Choice (B) is incorrect. Being ruthless is not generally associated with being mysterious. Someone who is ruthless is not going to stop doing something that causes damage because of appeals for pity. But a process can cause damage and be unstoppable without being mysterious. The author describes the "clocks that regulate aging" (line 46) as both mysterious and ruthless. But since the two words mean different things, the author clearly is not using the word "ruthless" to suggest that the human body's aging process is mysterious.

Explanation for Incorrect Answer C :

Choice (C) is incorrect. It is likely that some people do age more rapidly than others, simply because there is a great deal of physiological and biological variation among human beings. But the author is not likely to use the word "ruthless" (line 46) to make that point because of what the word means. The word means merciless, or cruel, and what this meaning suggests with respect to aging is that nobody will escape aging, not that some do it more rapidly than others.

Explanation for Incorrect Answer D :

Choice (D) is incorrect. "Ruthless" suggests not being easily swayed or changed. To say that the clocks that control the aging process are ruthless, therefore, means that no one will be spared. Everyone is bound to age. This point is completely independent of whether people's sense of time changes, or does not change, as they age. So the author cannot be using the word "ruthless" (line 46) to suggest anything, one way or the other, about changes in people's sense of time as they grow older.

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18. ANSWERS AND EXPLANATIONS

Explanation for Correct Answer C :

Choice (C) is correct. The author smokes his great-grandfather's pipe and describes the smoke as having "the most wonderful and foreign blend of smells" (lines 55-56). The author goes on to say that the different places and times when Papa Joe smoked that pipe—places and times that the author will never know—"all had been locked up in that pipe and now poured out into the room" (lines 57-59). Things that are written further up on a page are generally thought of as having happened earlier in time. Thus by writing, "I was vaguely aware that something had got delightfully twisted in time for a moment, skipped upward on the page" (lines 59-61), the author suggests that the smell of the smoke helped him travel back in time in his imagination.

Explanation for Incorrect Answer A :

Choice (A) is incorrect. The author uses the phrase "skipped upward on the page" (line 61) to express the same experience as the experience described by the phrase "got delightfully twisted in time for a moment" (lines 60-61). But getting "delightfully twisted up in time for a moment" does not describe anything to do with reading. Both phrases describe an experience of feeling transported back in time, not the experience of rereading a portion of the page.

Explanation for Incorrect Answer B :

Choice (B) is incorrect. The author's imagination was affected by the smell of the smoke, but there is no suggestion that his vision was affected.

Explanation for Incorrect Answer D :

Choice (D) is incorrect. Papa Joe and the surroundings in which Papa Joe smoked his pipe are brought to the author's mind by the smell of the smoke from the pipe, not by what the author was reading at the time.

Explanation for Incorrect Answer E :

Choice (E) is incorrect. The closest thing to "recreating the past" that is mentioned in the passage occurs when the author smelled the smoke from his great-grandfather's pipe. According to the passage, all the occasions when the author's great grandfather lit his pipe "had been locked up in that pipe and now poured out into the room" (lines 58-59). Although the author had been reading when the smoke transported him in his imagination into the past, there is no indication that he believes that reading itself is a good way to recreate the past.

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