Reading Comprehension

Medium

Man has always been curious to know about the origin of life. Some have suggested that the life could have been brought to Earth by extra-terrestrials! For example, Eric von Daniken suggested this in Chariots of the Gods, which he wrote around 40 years ago. Similar suggestion was made by Sir Fred Hoyle and Professor N. Chandra Wickremasinghe, scientists with impeccable credentials, in 1970s. They propounded the Panspermia (meaning “seeds everywhere”) theory which maintains that life evolved out of a primordial soup, which got dispersed into cosmos through comets and meteorites. Life began on Earth, when some of this landed on it. However, many mainstream scientists just laugh it out. An obvious reason for this is that the conditions conducive to existence of life and its propagation as available on Earth are not there elsewhere; one of these being the temperature factor. Titan, though quite different from our mother planet, Earth, has many special features, which the scientists believe could help in revealing the origin of life. It is the only moon in our solar system with an atmosphere. And this could be similar to that of Earth when life began here. Thanks to Voyager I, we already know that the Titan’s atmosphere predominantly contains nitrogen with small percentage of methane. But Titan is surrounded by a thick orange haze which obstructs the view below the dense clouds and therefore no one has been able to know about the surface features. However, being 1200 million kilometres away from the sun, titan has a very low surface temperature, -180°C, which makes the chances of life on it very slim.

According to the passage it is not possible to know about Titan’s surface features because

of its locations

of cover of methane and ethane gases

of the presence of thick orange haze

of excessive solar radiation

✅ Correct Option: 3

'of its location' - This is incorrect. The passage does not state that Titan's location is the reason why we can't know about its surface features.
'of cover of methane and ethane gases' - This is incorrect. While methane is mentioned in the passage, it is not stated as the reason for obstructing the view of Titan’s surface.
'of the presence of thick orange haze' - This is correct. The passage explicitly states, 'But Titan is surrounded by a thick orange haze which obstructs the view below the dense clouds and therefore no one has been able to know about the surface features.'
'of excessive solar radiation' - This is incorrect. The passage does not mention excessive solar radiation as a reason for not knowing about Titan’s surface features.

Question 1

Select the appropriate option which is NOT true according to the passage.

Question 2

The word ‘conducive’ in the paragraph 1 means:

Question 3

Select the most appropriate title of the passage

According to the passage it is not possible to know about Titan’s surface features because

Solution

More from this passage:

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