Sentence Correction

amysky_0205 wrote:Scientists have identified an asteroid, 2000 BF19, that is about half a mile wide and, if it strikes Earth, it can do tremendous damage to part of the planet but probably not cause planetwide destruction.

A. and, if it strikes Earth, it can do tremendous damage to part of the planet but
B. and, if it would strike Earth, part of the planet could experience a tremendous amount of damage but it would
C. and that, if it were to strike Earth, could do tremendous damage to part of the planet but would
D. and that, if Earth is struck by it, can do part of the planet tremendous damage, but it would
E. and that, if it strikes Earth, it could experience a tremendous amount of damage but

OA: C

can someone explain this one?

I chose E instead of C.
and i know that it needs a THAT after and so that it'll be parallel.

thank u!!!

mrigank_bhushan wrote:Hi,

I presume this a complex statement which has subordinate clauses.

You are already aware of "that" for parallelism, so option Aand B can be eliminated.

D flips around with tenses changing from Past Tense and Past Perfect ( Read: "struck by it" / "but it would") , which makes it a wordy and incorrect option, hence eliminated.

E cannot be correct for 2 reasons.
i) the part which says "it could experience a trmendous...", we dont know what 'it' is relating to(as in Earth or the Asteroid) which makes the sentence Ambiguous. hence eliminated
ii)it also adds a new adjective "amount" which may/maynot relate to "a part of" (the Earth) the correct sense of the statement. hence eliminated

Bottomline: C is not entirely the correct option but the best in the available ones.

thanks