(50 points) "since stars are 100 percent certified balls of gas, they are not immune from the fate that greeted our hapless clouds. if one star in a binary system becomes a black hole, then the black hole does not get to eat until late in the companion star’s life, when it swells to become a red giant. if the red giant grows large enough, then it will ultimately get flayed, as the black hole peels and eats the star, layer by layer. but for a star that just happens to wander into the neighborhood, tidal forces will initially stretch it, but eventually, differential rotation will shear the star into a friction-heated disk of highly luminous gas." —“death by black hole,” neil degrasse tyson what is the central idea of this passage from tyson’s essay? a) black holes and stars are both gigantic balls of gas. b)black holes are a dangerous and powerful force in the universe. c)black holes eat anything that comes within their reach. d)red giants are protected from black holes by their size.

Read the excerpt from cristina garcia’s dreaming in cuban. i don’t really want to talk about my father but i end up telling minnie how he used to take me horseback riding on our ranch, strapping me in his saddle with a leather seat belt he designed just for me. dad’s family owned casinos in cuba, and had one of the largest ranches on the island. there were beef cattle and dairy cows, horses, pigs, goats, and lambs. dad fed them molasses to fatten them, and gave the chickens corn and sorghum until they laid vermilion eggs, rich with vitamins. he took me on an overnight inspection once. we camped out under a sapodilla tree and listened to the pygmy owls with their old women’s voices. my father knew i understood more than i could say. he told me stories about cuba after columbus came. he said that the spaniards wiped out more indians with smallpox than with muskets. how does the structure of the excerpt add meaning to the passage? it includes historical information about the spaniards and indians to indicate the work is nonfiction. it describes the setting of the ranch owned by pilar’s cuban grandparents to explain family values. it uses several narrators to share their points of view about past and present life in cuba. it manipulates the chronological order of events to reveal the close relationship between pilar and her father.