Critical Reasoning

Although fullerenes - spherical molecules made entirely of carbon - were first found in laboratory, they have since been found in nature, formed in fissures of the rare mineral shungite. Since laboratory synthesis of fullerenes requires distinctive conditions of temperature and pressure, this discovery should give geologists a test case for evaluating hypotheses about the state of the Earth's crust at the time these naturally occurring fullerenes were formed.

Which of the following, if true, most seriously undermines the argument ?

A) Confirming that the shungite genuinely contained fullerenes took careful experimentation.
B) Some fullerenes have also been found on the remains of a small meteorite that collided with a spacecraft.
C) The mineral shungite itself contains large amounts of carbon, from which the fullerenes apparently formed.
D) The naturally occurring fullerenes arranged in a previously unknown crystalline structure.
E) Shungite itself is formed only under distinct conditions.

OA D

I know this has been well discussed by testluv in the past,

I even narrowed down to selecting D as the correct answer in my test, but the stem reads. D) The naturally occurring fullerenes arranged in a previously unknown crystalline structure.

previously unknown,,,,,,,wait a minute, this means that it is known now. this was my reaction to this construction and thus i deliberately rejected D and went for E

anyone on this ?

bblast wrote:I know this has been well discussed by testluv in the past,

I even narrowed down to selecting D as the correct answer in my test, but the stem reads. D) The naturally occurring fullerenes arranged in a previously unknown crystalline structure.

previously unknown,,,,,,,wait a minute, this means that it is known now. this was my reaction to this construction and thus i deliberately rejected D and went for E

anyone on this ?

What it is saying is that it is just known after the discovery, meaning that the fullerenes formed in the lab (which would be the structure previously known) are different than these fullerenes and could thus be formed in a different manner. If they are formed in a different manner then the data about time, temp, and pressure from the labs has no significance to these findings.

The reason to easily eliminate E is that shungite is not really what we are questioning here. How it is formed makes little difference as to how the nanotubes may be formed.