Dear Friends,
Here is a detailed explanation to this question-
kaijen wrote:
The spectacular disintegration of a comet last year in full view of ground- and space-based telescopes provided new insights into how comets form and may thus force a rethinking of the role of comets in the delivery of organic compounds to the evolving Earth.
(A) The spectacular disintegration of a comet last year in full view of ground- and space-based telescopes provided new insights into how comets form and may thus force
(B) The spectacular disintegration of a comet last year in full view of ground- as well as space-based telescopes, provided new insights into how comets form and thus possibly forcing
(C) When a comet's spectacular disintegration occurred in full view of ground- and space-based telescopes last year, it provided new insights into how comets form and thus may possibly force
(D) Last year, in full view of ground- and space-based telescopes, a comet's spectacular disintegration provided new insights into how comets form and thus possibly forcing
(E) Last year, in full view of ground- as well as space-based telescopes, the spectacular disintegration of a comet has provided new insights into how comets form and may thus force
Choice A: Option A maintains parallelism and proper tense usage throughout the sentence and conveys the intended meaning. Thus, Option A is correct.
Choice B: In Option B, "provided..." incorrectly modifies "telescopes" rather than "disintegration". Thus, Option B is incorrect.
Choice C: In Option C, we see a parallelism error between "provided" and "forcing" as the former is a verb and the latter is a modifier. Remember, elements joined by "and" must be parallel. Thus, Option C is incorrect.
Choice D: Option D repeats the parallelism error found in Option C. Thus, Option D is incorrect.
Choice E: Option E uses the wrong tense, present perfect, in the phrase "has provided" to refer to something that concluded in the past; this is evidenced by the use of the phrase "Last Year".
Hence, A is the best answer choice.To understand the concept of “Present Perfect Tense on GMAT”, you may want to watch the following video (~1 minute):
All the best!
Experts' Global Team