LSAT 149 | Section 2 | Reading Comprehension: Q7

RC Question 7 Explanation

DISCUSSION: When you play a movie, you watch it from start to finish and see what happens. The scientists are doing the same thing: they create some theoretical laws for a universe, and then see what happens when you make a universe with those laws.

You can see this if you keep reading the line with “play the movie”. It says: they do simulations and calculations and “see what disasters occur” [in the fictional universe]. So playing the movie means seeing what happens under the new laws the scientists made.

___________

1. No. The scientists are looking at a fictional universe, but “play the movie” isn’t referring to that. Instead, it refers to watching what happens in the simulation.
2. CORRECT. See the discussion above. The scientists setup a fictional world, and then they see what happens under the rules the made. It’s like starting a universe at the big bang and then watching what happens over time.
3. No. The situation can be dramatic: disasters occur. But really, it’s just a simulation in a computer, and there are no humans in that simulation. It’s not that dramatic.
4. This sentence means that cosmologists would model their scientific work on action movie archetypes. That makes zero sense! The movie was an analogy, not a model for scientific work.
5. When you watch a movie, do you play a role in the movie? No! So this answer makes no sense, as it’s referring to “playing a movie”. You passively watch a movie, just as the scientists passively watch their simulation unfold.