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I had this one down to A and B.

A certainly makes sense. But doesn't B as well? We wouldn't worry any longer about the fact that we will not have many amino acids form readily. We could possibly only need one amino acid. This seems to work too.

Why not B?

Bump.

Bump.

Bump again

Bump

http://www.manhattanlsat.com/forums/q10 ... 0dbf917668

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They are really good forum to ask questions

The question asked specifically about how lightning could have produced it. The fact stated in B does not speak to how the amino acid was formed in the first place. I think you may have been thinking too hard about this.

When I saw this, I thought, "Okay, aa don't form easily unless in a reducing atmosphere. The atmosphere when life began was not a reducing atmosphere (overall)." I wanted to hear something about some rare place on earth that maintained a reducing atmosphere (like deep in a cave or the ocean) despite the rest of the atmosphere being O2 rich. "A" wasn't exactly what I was thinking, but it fit into that general idea.

I got this correct but looking at the question over, it seems like what almost made me pick B was that A said life could begin at the impact site, kinda like saying life could begin in a nuclear explosion. Then I recalled the famous Big Bang theory and justified A with it in mind

This question bothered me too. The question asks for "how lightning could have produced the first amino acidS on Earth." The question is NOT "How could lightning have created life?" If it was the second question, (B) would be a much better answer. The whole "building block of life" thought is irrelevant and thrown in there to confuse you. So really, (B) has no bearing on the question: How did lightning create amino acids?

But doesn't the stimulus state as a premise that the atmosphere wasn't reduced when life began? We don't know for how long, but the stimulus suggests that at that particular moment it wasn't reduced. And then the question stem specifically tells us to take that claim as true. Doesn't that then rule out a temporary exception? I would have selected (A) without hesitation if it wasn't for this concern and for the wording in the question stem.

The stimulus say that overall atmosphere wasn't reducing. However, answer choice (A) says that a meteor created a temporary reducing atmosphere around the impact site.

flippacious wrote:The stimulus say that overall atmosphere wasn't reducing. However, answer choice (A) says that a meteor created a temporary reducing atmosphere around the impact site.

Something similar happened to me on the question about stress and typing on this PT. I overlooked how that stimulus qualified the scope to only include people with the same amount of typing, and then I bit on an answer choice designed to test that qualification. I sometimes narrow in on the precise wording of the conclusion at the expense of acheiving the same understanding of the support. But at least I can begin to detect some of the patterns that make me miss about two questions every section.

In this question, you're supposed to explain how life began at a time when the air is rich in oxygen and lean in nitrogen. You know that amino acids, the building blocks of life, have to form in an environment where the air is rich in hydrogen and lean in oxygen.

So you're supposed to explain the differences in air (specifically oxygen).

A does that exactly.

B- doesn't help us explain the air difference and how life could form in a rich oxygen environment
C- Sure, but this answer choice doesn't explain how life began (specifically how amino acids were able to create life)
D- Same as B
E- Amino acids could survive the impact, but could they survive the environment on earth with rich oxygen? They need lean oxygen to form life!