PrepTest 144, Section 1, Question 27
Passage A Karl Popper's main contribution to the(496 more words not shown)
Passage A(258 more words not shown)
Passage B(246 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(18 more words not shown)
- AGalileo proposed that(36 more words not shown)
- BBy observing "variable(37 more words not shown)
- CWalter Alvarez postulated(48 more words not shown)
- DBernard Brunhes discovered(31 more words not shown)
- EWhen a neutron(53 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
The Neptune episode has a specific sequence: a theory and some assumptions produce a prediction; observation conflicts with it; scientists propose an unaccounted-for object; the object's discovery resolves the conflict while preserving the theory.
What we’re looking for
We need more than a theory receiving new support. The new finding must explain an apparent failure by supplying something the original calculation left out.
Working the answers
- A
This gives us a theory and an incorrect prediction about the number of tides. It stops there. No newly found factor repairs the mismatch while allowing the theory to survive.
- B
Hubble's observation settles a debate about the extent of the universe. It does not supply an overlooked factor that reconciles an apparently failed prediction with the theory that produced it.
- C
The crater supplies additional support for the asteroid explanation. But we are not told that the explanation had produced a prediction contradicted by observation and that the crater resolves that contradiction. Confirmation alone leaves out the central problem-and-repair relationship.
- D
Brunhes uses the unusual magnetization of rocks to infer a reversal of Earth's magnetic field. There is no proposed missing object whose later discovery reconciles the observations with an apparently failing theory.
- ECorrect
The apparent missing energy matches the incorrect orbital prediction; conservation of energy matches Newton's laws; and the undetected particle matches Neptune. Discovering the particle accounts for what the original calculation left out, resolving the apparent contradiction without abandoning the law. All parts of the scientific episode line up.
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