This is a comparison question. Solving it relies on understanding how the prepositions 'than' and 'as' are used in comparisons.
Comparisons either compare two things that are equal or unequal in respect to a certain trait. We use 'than' for unequal comparisons, and 'as...as' for equal comparisons.
Unequal: London is
more expensive
than Liverpool.
Equal: London is
as expensive
as Paris.
As you can see in the question below, the comparison is an unequal comparison: lightweight black holes have less mass
than middleweight black holes. The comparison must use
than - this eliminates A and B.
What about C, D, and E - all of them use '
than'?
It is easy to see that of the remaining answer choices, C is the most concise. D and E are wordy and create more confusion by introducing the pronoun 'it' unnecessarily.
monirjewel wrote:
A middleweight black hole weighs in at roughly 500 solar masses, hundreds of times more massive than the lightweight black holes produced by the collapse of individual stars, but thousands or even millions of times less in its mass as the heavyweight giants that lurk in the centers of galaxies.
(A) thousands or even millions of times less in its mass as
(B) it is thousands or even millions of times less massive as
(C) thousands or even millions of times less massive than
(D) yet it is thousands or even millions times less massive than
(E) yet it is thousands or even millions of times less in its mass than
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84% (01:08) correct 
