LSAT 128 | Section 4 | Reading Comprehension: Q16

RC Question 16 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: The author’s discussion of nuclear fusion …

DISCUSSION: Nuclear fusion later ended up proving that Payne was right, but this type of understanding didn’t exist in Payne’s time. So the last paragraph aims to say that this resistance may have come (at least to some degree) from a lack of understanding of nuclear fusion and its processes.

___________

1. The passage doesn’t discuss nuclear physics as a separate discipline.
2. CORRECT. Scientists resisted Payne’s findings because they didn’t yet understand nuclear fusion – which later confirmed her claims.
3. Payne rejected the iron hypothesis because of spectroscopic data inconsistencies, not because of nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion wasn’t known at the time.
4. Her findings weren’t modified by later discoveries, they were validated by them.
5. The passage never suggested her data was incorrect.