Sentence Correction

Galileo was convinced that natural phenomena, as manifestations of the laws of physics, would appear the same to someone on the deck of a ship moving smoothly and uniformly through the water as a person standing on land.

(A) water as a
(B) water as to a
(C) water; just as it would to a
(D) water, as it would to the
(E) water; just as to the

IMO D, because it is making right comparison between someone on deck and someone on land(I think so).
OA please...

Please explain every wrong option. Why are the wrong options wrong? We should have an answer for the wrong option.

Thanks.

it should be B

yes Real is right, it is B, here goes the explanation( I am out of form today)

(A) Without the preposition to, the sentence is neither idiomatic nor parallel.

(B) Correct. The sentence uses the correct idiom, and the two parts of the comparison are parallel.

(C) Semicolon creates a sentence fragment.

(D) The idiom is the same to x as to y, but this change would make it incorrect: the same to x, as it would to,y, which also introduces a problem of agreement between the plural phenomena and the singular it.

(E) A sentence fragment.