LSAT 130 | Section 2 | Reading Comprehension: Q13

RC Question 13 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: It can be inferred from the passage that one of the reasons massively parallel computers had not been used to model oil field flow prior to 1989 is that

DISCUSSION: This is an extraordinarily difficult question, but the right answer does have direct support.

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1. This goes against the passage. Lines 19-21 say that supercomputers were too slow and inefficient to solve oil flows. Presumably, oil field flow researchers would have noticed this. The success of supercomputers in other areas wouldn’t blind researchers to supercomputing’s failings in field flows.
2. The passage says that Emeagwali pioneered the use of such networks of smaller computers. That means he was the first to make such networks. However, this is not the same thing as being the first to consider a parallel system. Someone could have thought of the idea but not actually implemented it.
    
   The passage does also say that Emeagwali is willing to reach beyond established paradigms. However, if I randomly think “I wonder if computers could run in parallel?” and then forget about it, I have considered the idea, but I haven’t established a paradigm, not by a long shot.
3. The general public doesn’t have much to do with scientific research. Only a small number of researchers at the forefront of a field determine its direction.
4. This isn’t mentioned. It’s possible that oil companies had a great need for modeling software, but couldn’t figure out how to do it!
5. CORRECT. The middle of paragraph 2 says that preventing interference is “a great difficulty” of parallel computer systems, which certainly suggests that the smaller computers in these systems can interfere with each other.
    
   This certainly is a difficulty that needs to be overcome to use parallel systems, and that could have been a reason they were not used to model oil flow.