PT88.S4.Q26 - SA Q on microbes/methane

youbbyun

I got this question wrong because I misidentified the conclusion. I thought the last sentence was the conclusion and the second sentence was a premise(which didn’t seem that relevant at the time). Both sentences are conditional.

My question is in these questions, how can I tell what is the main conclusion? I was not super familiar with the topic(microbes/methane) and I had trouble identifying the main conclusion, so I just poorly assumed the last sentence was the main conclusion. But how could have I had known that the 2nd sentence was the main conclusion and not the last, given that both sentences were conditional statements and it was not super obvious or intuitive (and it was hard using the “because” test of “because P, then C” since it was difficult to determine what was P and C due to the obscure stimulus topic on microbes/methane?

Admin note: edited title; please use the format of "PT#.S#.Q# - [brief description]"

Maeeeeee

first sentence is the context and if that's the case
=no methane, therefore no life on planet 253
if you can see, the last sentence is there to support
why no methane means no life by talking about microbes
(so it's a premise) but left a gap between microbes and no life (what we had to find out)

or you could just connect the dots without caring too much about what the conclusion is

/methane ->/ life

/methane -> /microbes

and if you spot the gap between no life on planet 253 and the microbes
that's the part you have to assume
/microbes->/life

so my thinking process goes something like this
ok it's talking about no life on planet 253 and all of a sudden talking about microbes thats nothing to do with planet 253, so in the answer choice i want to see something between no life in planet 253 and microbes, then i go thru the ACs to see what talks about the missing part (D)

sorry for the lousy explanation i was trying to make it as simple as possible but hope it helps!