from gmatprep

I am totally lost on this one. pls, help .

Scientists have identified an asteroid, 2000 BF19, that is about half a mile wide and, if it strikes Earth, it can do tremendous damage to part of the planet but probably not cause planetwide destruction.
A. and, if it strikes Earth, it can do tremendous damage to part of the planet but
B. and, if it would strike Earth, part of the planet could experience a tremendous amount of damage but it would
C. and that, if it were to strike Earth, could do tremendous damage to part of the planet but would
D. and that, if Earth is struck by it, can do part of the planet tremendous damage, but it would
E. and that, if it strikes Earth, it could experience a tremendous amount of damage but

sory for post second time

I find nothing wrong with

the scientists discovered the star and it can damage the earth

but the above sentence is not intended meaning of the problem and

A is wrong

Am I correct?

if the above sentence stand alone, it is right. But it stands by C, it is wrong.

In many SC problem, I see gmat think this way.

for example the question: "industry output in US...." in OG10

Am I correct

Ron, members, pls, help

when you look at these sentences with "and", you need to figure out what should be grouped -- in other words, which ideas are meant to be expressed in parallel structure.

in this sentence, those two ideas are the two facts about the asteroid:
* the asteroid is about 1/2 mile wide.
* if the asteroid strikes earth, blah blah blah xxxxx will happen.

look at how (a) is written:
(Scientists have identified an asteroid, 2000 BF19, that is about half a mile wide) and, (if it strikes Earth, it can do tremendous damage to part of the planet but probably not cause planetwide destruction.)
this grouping doesn't make sense.

look at how (c) is written:
Scientists have identified an asteroid, 2000 BF19, (that is about half a mile wide) and (that, if it were to strike Earth, could do xxxx)
this is the correct grouping.

_________________
Being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity [that] religion is powerless to bestow.
C.F. Forbes

on gmat, we have 3 if-then patterns

if do, then will do /can do
if did, then would do/could do
if had done, then would have done/could have done

is that thing right?

these three patterns are valid, provided that they make sense in context. remember that verb tenses can NEVER be memorized -- they are always a function of the timeframe and intention of the sentence.

these are certainly not the only possible uses of “if… then”, but they are valid. (in general, a complete list is not something that we are going to be able to give you, for reasons that i wrote about here:
post60919.html#p60919)

_________________
Being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity [that] religion is powerless to bestow.
C.F. Forbes

I was stuck between a and c, eventually i went with 'a' option.
I was not sure about 'c' as I thought usage of would with probably is redundant.

and that, if it were to strike Earth, could do tremendous damage to part of the planet but would

Any body from the staff please clear my doubt.

"would" and "probably" are different parts of speech and have different meanings, so they are not redundant.
--"probably" is an adverb that means "very likely"
--"would" is a verb that is the past tense version of "will", among other uses

_________________
Jamie Nelson
ManhattanGMAT Instructor

I understand C is correct but I don't understand why 'that' is omitted after 'but' and before 'would'..

I believe 'that' was needed to maintain parallelism.
Kindly help. .

could do damage but would not cause

that is perfectly parallel. what makes you think "could" and "would" are not parallel?

_________________
Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor