This question is testing VERB TENSES. When you see differences in verb tense in answer choices, ask yourself: "when are these events happening in time?"
The intended meaning of the sentence should be:
- light left these quasars long in the past
- we're just seeing that light now
Quasars are so distant that their light has taken billions of years to reach the Earth; consequently, we see them as they were during the formation of the universe.
(A) we see them as they were during
- simple present tense for what we see now
- simple past tense for what these quasars were like in the past
(B) we see them as they had been during
- the past perfect "had been" should only be used in relation to another past tense event: "it had been X before Y happened." Since the only other event in this sentence is present tense, the past perfect is not appropriate.
(C) we see them as if during
- "as if" is hypothetical, but this really happened
- "as if during" doesn't locate the formation of the universe in a different time period to the present moment. It's more logical to use the past tense here.
(D) they appear to us as they did in
- the logical extension of this comparison is "they appear to us (now) as they did (appear to us) at the beginning of the universe" - in other words, it implies that we were there at the beginning of the universe. Illogical!
(E) they appear to us as though in
- similar to C - this is hypothetical and present-tense. We need to situate the formation of the universe as an actual event in the past.
The answer is A.
Ceilidh Erickson
EdM in Mind, Brain, and Education
Harvard Graduate School of Education
