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Hi honorable experts,
MartyTargetTestPrep, GMATNinja, GMATGuruNY, AjiteshArun, VeritasPrepHailey, BrightOutlookJenn,
I've two queries in this question.
Q1:
Is there any ellipsis word like 'appear' after the word 'would' both in choice C and D?

Q2:
People says that 'it' refers back to 'phenomena' in choice C and D logically. But as 'it' is singular and 'phenomena' is plural they don't match. My question is: how do people know that 'phenomena' is plural? So far I know that GMAC keeps a hint to understand either the pronoun is singular or plural. Unfortunately, I did not get any hints for this question .
Can you share your thought, please?
Thanks in advanced..

Galileo was convinced that natural phenomena, as manifestations of the laws of physics, would appear the same to someone on the deck of a ship moving smoothly and uniformly through the water as a person standing on land.

(A) water as a X

We need to maintain the parallelism here : “…to someone…to a person standing”

(B) water as to a CORRECT

(C) water; just as it would to X

It’s unclear what the ‘it’ is referring to. Is ‘it’ the natural phenomena? Ship?

(D) water, as it would to the X

This breaks the parallelism. The ‘it’ is also unclear. A subtle detail, but the use of the article ‘the’ to signify a person whose reference is understood is also wrong.

(E) water; just as to the X

‘just as’ is wrong.
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