notahug wrote:
The Earth’s rivers constantly carry dissolved salts into its oceans. Clearly, therefore, by taking the resulting increase in salt levels in the oceans over the past hundred years and then determining how many centuries of such increases it would have taken the oceans to reach current salt levels from a hypothetical initial salt-free state, the maximum age of the Earth’s oceans can be accurately estimated.
Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?
A. The quantities of dissolved salts deposited by rivers in the Earth’s oceans have not been unusually large during the past hundred years.
B. At any given time, all the Earth’s rivers have about the same salt levels.
C. There are salts that leach into the Earth’s oceans directly from the ocean floor.
D. There is no method superior to that based on salt levels for estimating the maximum age of the Earth’s oceans.
E. None of the salts carried into the Earth’s oceans by rivers are used up by biological activity in the oceans.
Dont forget your reasoning! Tks
I am going with A..it directly effects the statement. If the don't have a uniform quantity how will you determine the age. The quantity needs to be constant
E - Even if the salt was used by biological activity in the ocean its been happening for centuries too and so the salt increase in the past 100 years would be ok to calculate the age of the ocean
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