Astronomers have uncovered evidence that a star that

[RonPurewal]

I have a doubt with the correct answer choice B.

first --
OFFICIALLY CORRECT ANSWERS ARE CORRECT!
do not question officially correct answers!
far too many students on this forum make the mistake of questioning the correct answers; please note that doing so is a complete waste of your time and effort. i.e., exactly 0% of the time that you spend posting "isn't this official answer wrong?" is productive, and exactly 100% of that time is wasted.

"is this correct?" is NEVER a productive question to ask about one of GMAC's correct answers -- the answer is always yes.
"is this wrong?" / "is this X type of error?" is NEVER a productive question to ask about one of GMAC's correct answers -- the answer is always no.

instead, the questions you should be asking about correct official answers, if you don't understand them, are:
"why is this correct?"
"how does this work?"
"what understanding am i lacking that i need to understand this choice?"

this is a small, but hugely significant, change to your way of thinking -- you will suddenly find it much easier to understand the format, style, and conventions of the official problems if you dispose of the idea that they might be wrong.

It states, "as the full moon exploded into view...". Does this not mean that the moon itself exploded?

no.
those words are part of the larger construction "as bright as the full moon"; you cannot parse "as the full moon" separately.

With option D, we find that the two structures "exploding.." and "emitting" are parallel. They may not be sub-events of each other but instead separate events that occurred one after another? So, the star first exploded and then started to emit. The +ing structure of "exploding" is just after comma, so it may be modifying the full moon also. An ambiguity in itself.

no.
that's not how COMMA -ING works.

see here:
post46255.html#p46255

[ranjeet1975]

Is there no difference between

"uncovered evidence that .." and "uncovered evidence of ..."

and which is correct.

[tim]

The difference is in how these phrases are used:
You can uncover evidence that [something happened]
You can uncover evidence of [something]

In other words, the first one needs both a subject and a verb, whereas the second one needs just a subject..

[manhhiep2509]

Hi instructors.

Please explain whether in "evidence that + clause", "clause" expresses information that supports some opinion or is the opinion.

[RonPurewal]

Hi instructors.

Please explain whether in "evidence that + clause", "clause" expresses information that supports some opinion or is the opinion.

"Opinion" is the wrong word here.
An opinion is a personal judgment; it's the way you feel about something. E.g., "I don't like that outfit" is an opinion.
Feelings don't have "evidence""”that's why they are feelings, rather than facts"”so your question doesn't make sense in literal terms.

In any case, here's a correct example of the construction:
Your fingerprints are evidence that you were holding the gun at some point.
Examine that sentence and you'll figure out the role of each part. (It's much easier to analyze examples than to write generalities about them. Our minds think about language in terms of examples and analogies, not in terms of rules or generalities.)

[HM537]

Is "evidence of the star that" in choice C used appropriate here? I think "that was as bright as..." modifies the "star". this kind of structure make the content of the evidence unreadable. It seems that the evidence is about the star but not clarify the content of the evidence?

[RonPurewal]

no one found evidence of a star.
rather, some people found evidence that a star exploded a long time ago.

[aflaamM589]

Hello Ron,
I understand that in C, parallellism is faulty because second part of and is not a seperate event, rather a sub event.

Just want to know that, isn't construction itself faulty?

C) of a star that was as bright as the full moon exploding into view 340,000 years ago and that it emitted

a star
that verb
and
that subject verb

it should either be
a star
that verb
and
that verb

or
a star
that subject verb
and
that subject verb

but not as in C.

Can C be crossed out also for this reason?

Thanks
Have a nice day

[RonPurewal]

you're not comparing the right things.

if "emit" is going to be parallel to anything, that clearly has to be "explode", since those are the two things that the star did.
(trying to put "star" and "emit" in parallel is clearly nonsense, so there's no point in wasting your time analyzing that.)

...but, "emit" and "explode" are in non-parallel forms, so you can eliminate that choice.

[SrishtiM905]

Hi Ron, please advise if my approach is correct.

Astronomers have uncovered evidence that a star that was as bright as the full moon exploding into view 340.000 years ago, emitting dazzling radiation that could have disrupted Earth's protective ozone layer and sunburned our Stone Age ancestors.

A. that a star that was as bright as the full moon exploding into view 340,000 years ago, emitting - 'exploding' incorrectly describes full moon.
B. that a star as bright as the full moon exploded into view 340,000 years ago, emitting - CORRECT. 'STAR' exploded into view. 'emitting' (star still exits and thus till emitting) and 'sunburned' (action happened in the past. already completed) correctly describing star that exploded into view.
C. of a star that was as bright as the full moon exploding into view 340,000 years ago and that it emitted - same as A
D. of a star as bright as the full moon, exploding into view 340,000 years ago and emitting - incorrect meaning. poor parallelism
E. of a star as bright as the full moon that exploded into view 340,000 years ago and that emitted - 'emit' has to be parallel with 'sunburn' but there is no 'that' before 'sunburn'. So incorrect parallelism. And refer explanation for B. meaning is orrectly aligned with structure/grammar in B.

[RonPurewal]

actually, this is pretty bad news, but... exactly zero of the items you wrote in that post are correct.

your comments on choice D are neither correct nor incorrect, because they aren't specific enough to be either. (WHAT do you think is the "incorrect meaning"? WHAT elements do you think are nonparallel?)

on all the other choices, everything you wrote is incorrect (... literally, every single individual statement by itself is wrong!).

on top of that, you've overlooked basically all of the MAJOR points. you're looking at completely random pieces of completely random answer choices, and just hoping that "a lightbulb turns on" inside your head when you look at them. this is THE WORST POSSIBLE APPROACH to SC.
basically, you need to go all the way back to the beginning of this entire process... forget literally everything you "know" about SC... and start over again from zero, FOCUSING ON FUNDAMENTALS AND MAJOR ISSUES this time.

__

you can solve this entire problem just thinking about fundamental, ground-level ways to connect the main parts of the sentence.

• if you do the first step (= READ FOR INTENDED MEANING) properly, then, you should understand that "emitting..." needs to be expressed as a comma __ing modifier (describing the star's action of exploding into view).
...also, for exactly the same reason, it's nonsense to connect "exploding" and "emitting" with "AND" (since those are not 2 separate things).

this is ALREADY ENOUGH TO SOLVE THE ENTIRE PROBLEM, since only the correct choice B actually uses a "comma __ing" modifier where it SHOULD use one.

as usual,you don't need anything beyond fundamentals.

__

• there's no problem with "exploding" in A and C. (it's not possible to break up "a star as bright as the full moon".)

• apparently, you're disregarding the context entirely -- since you're trying to put completely random words ("emitting" and "sunburned") in parallel.
if you FIRST read this sentence the way you'd read "normal" text, such as in a magazine, blog post, or e-mail -- which is what you should ALWAYS do first in sentence correction -- then it will be clear that "disrupted" and "sunburned" (= two things that the RADIATION DID) are parallel. these aren't underlined, so, they are a non-factor in this problem.

• it is impossible for "emitting" and "sunburned" to be parallel here, since "sunburned" is a verb while "emitting" is not.
...so, according to the reasoning you wrote in green, you SHOULD think choice B is WRONG! (...but that choice is actually fine, since those aren't the actual parallel structures)

• choice A isn't even a sentence. (there's no VERB... note where choice B has "exploded".)

• choice C has a parallel structure that's incorrect in BOTH possible ways -- (i) it puts the wrong things in parallel to begin with, AND (ii) the structures themselves don't match (the right-hand element is "that it emitted...", and there's definitely nothing on the left-hand side to match this).
...yet you haven't even mentioned parallelism as a problem in this choice.

__

there are other problems, too, but... focusing on those will just make your current issue (= ignoring FUNDAMENTALS and ignoring CONTEXT) even more pronounced.

[RonPurewal]

also—
in the future, if you're going to post on these threads, please READ THE ENTIRE DISCUSSION THREAD FIRST. please do NOT post questions about anything that is already covered earlier on the thread.

any future posts like this one -- in which the poster COMPLETELY IGNORES the 20 or 30 or 40 already existing posts on the thread, and tries to "summarize" the entire problem with red and green text -- will be immediately deleted, since they destroy the logical flow of the threads.

(...also, on forums where these "red and green" posts are common... well, they pretty much ALWAYS contain several points that are totally wrong. from what i've seen on those forums, i'd say that half or more of the red and green points are wrong in at least 80 or 90 percent of those posts.)

__

the point of this forum is to help with SPECIFIC QUESTIONS about INDIVIDUAL PROBLEMS.
honestly -- if you genuinely need to have someone "check your work" for EVERY answer choice, then... DON'T DO THAT PROBLEM YET!
if that's the case, then that means the problem is still WAY too hard for you, and so you should put it back on the shelf so that it's still "fresh" when you're ready for it.

[SrishtiM905]

actually, this is pretty bad news, but... exactly zero of the items you wrote in that post are correct.

your comments on choice D are neither correct nor incorrect, because they aren't specific enough to be either. (WHAT do you think is the "incorrect meaning"? WHAT elements do you think are nonparallel?)

on all the other choices, everything you wrote is incorrect (... literally, every single individual statement by itself is wrong!).

on top of that, you've overlooked basically all of the MAJOR points. you're looking at completely random pieces of completely random answer choices, and just hoping that "a lightbulb turns on" inside your head when you look at them. this is THE WORST POSSIBLE APPROACH to SC.
basically, you need to go all the way back to the beginning of this entire process... forget literally everything you "know" about SC... and start over again from zero, FOCUSING ON FUNDAMENTALS AND MAJOR ISSUES this time.

__

you can solve this entire problem just thinking about fundamental, ground-level ways to connect the main parts of the sentence.

• if you do the first step (= READ FOR INTENDED MEANING) properly, then, you should understand that "emitting..." needs to be expressed as a comma __ing modifier (describing the star's action of exploding into view).
...also, for exactly the same reason, it's nonsense to connect "exploding" and "emitting" with "AND" (since those are not 2 separate things).

this is ALREADY ENOUGH TO SOLVE THE ENTIRE PROBLEM, since only the correct choice B actually uses a "comma __ing" modifier where it SHOULD use one.

as usual,you don't need anything beyond fundamentals.

__

• there's no problem with "exploding" in A and C. (it's not possible to break up "a star as bright as the full moon".)

• apparently, you're disregarding the context entirely -- since you're trying to put completely random words ("emitting" and "sunburned") in parallel.
if you FIRST read this sentence the way you'd read "normal" text, such as in a magazine, blog post, or e-mail -- which is what you should ALWAYS do first in sentence correction -- then it will be clear that "disrupted" and "sunburned" (= two things that the RADIATION DID) are parallel. these aren't underlined, so, they are a non-factor in this problem.

• it is impossible for "emitting" and "sunburned" to be parallel here, since "sunburned" is a verb while "emitting" is not.
...so, according to the reasoning you wrote in green, you SHOULD think choice B is WRONG! (...but that choice is actually fine, since those aren't the actual parallel structures)

• choice A isn't even a sentence. (there's no VERB... note where choice B has "exploded".)

• choice C has a parallel structure that's incorrect in BOTH possible ways -- (i) it puts the wrong things in parallel to begin with, AND (ii) the structures themselves don't match (the right-hand element is "that it emitted...", and there's definitely nothing on the left-hand side to match this).
...yet you haven't even mentioned parallelism as a problem in this choice.

__

there are other problems, too, but... focusing on those will just make your current issue (= ignoring FUNDAMENTALS and ignoring CONTEXT) even more pronounced.

Hi Ron,

Thankyou so much for taking efforts for writing such an elaborate explanation and for your advice.

After reading your reply, I attemoeted the question again keeping your suggestions to focus on 'inteneded meaning' as the basis principe. And, I found it the problem really easy.
I'll practice the questions with this strategy from now onwards and will come back to u for any further assistance.

Thanks again!!

[RonPurewal]

you're welcome.

don't forget—establishing the intended meaning is ALWAYS the FIRST STEP of ANY sentence correction problem!
without the intended meaning, most splits are actually impossible to decide, since the vast majority of grammar rules just serve to specify the meaning of whatever construction.