SC: Mercury lacks a substantial atmosphere

[samwong]

Mercury lacks a substantial atmosphere unlike the other planets in the solar system, having such small size and proximity to the sun.

A) Mercury lacks a substantial atmosphere unlike the other planets in the solar system, having such

B) Unlike the other planets in the solar system, Mercury lacks a substantial atmosphere due to its

C) Unlike all the planets in the solar system, Mercury has no substantial atmosphere; because of its

D) Mercury lacks a substantial atmosphere unlike all the planets in the solar system: it has a

E)Unlike the other planets in the solar system, Mercury has no substantial atmosphere; because it has such

The official answer is B.

I did not pick B because of "due to". In one of Ron's study hall, he said that "due to" must modify a noun. In addition, Ron said that there are two ways to use "due to":

1) use the same rule as "based on"
2) when you substitute "due to" with "caused by", the sentence should still make sense.

When you have the following construction:

Subject + verb + object + "due to", then "due to" will modify the object.


Thus, I don't understand why B is correct. B states : "Mercury lacks a substantial atmosphere due to its small size and proximity to the sun." In this answer, "due to" does not make sense when it modifies the "atmoshpere". It does not make sense to say that the atmoshpere has small size and it is close to the sun. Instead, I picked answer choice D. Can you please explain why D is wrong and B is correct? Thank you.

[RonPurewal]

you're right; that problem is inconsistent with GMAC's known usage of "due to...".
we are going to edit the question. most likely, we'll just take "due to" out of the correct answer and substitute "because of".

nice catch, thanks.

[me.nikhil]

I got this question wrong because of the usage of "due to", can you please take it out of the options in prep tests ? Thanks !

[jnelson0612]

Sorry that it's still there! I'll alert Stacey to this issue.

[StaceyKoprince]

Just fixed it - thanks. If you already received it, you won't see the fix, but anyone who now gets the problem will get the fixed version.

The fix was literally just to replace "due to" with "because of" in the correct answer. :)