Varsity Tutors always has a different SAT Critical Reading Question of the Day ready at your disposal! If you’re just looking to get a quick review into your busy day, our SAT Critical Reading Question of the Day is the perfect option. Answer enough of our SAT Critical Reading Question of the Day problems and you’ll be ready to ace the next test. Check out what today’s SAT Critical Reading Question of the Day is below.

Universities want to know that you can perform well in class. One of the many ways these institutions will determine your skillset is by examining your latest SAT score. Created by the College Board, the SAT is a standardized test designed to showcase your abilities to universities across the country. If you are seeking to pursue higher education, you understand the importance of performing well on this examination. Varsity Tutors’ Learning Tools are here to help you with all of your test preparation needs. The Question of the Day for SAT Critical Reading is just one of the beneficial study tools in this set that can be utilized to prepare for a testing session. Varsity Tutors also offers resources like a free SAT prep book to help with your self-paced study, or you may want to consider an SAT Critical Reading tutor.

The Question of the Day is a daily test review; every day, you will be presented with a randomly selected question similar to what is expected to be found on the official examination. These questions test your current skills and may even impart new information to you. Whether you need top SAT tutors in New YorkSAT tutors in Chicago, or SAT tutors in Los Angeles, working with a pro may take your studies to the next level. For the Critical Reading portion of the SAT, the questions focus on the two main components in this area: reading comprehension and sentence completion. Reading comprehension accounts for the largest part of the Critical Reading segment. Through your answers, you can determine how well you understand the information that has been presented to you. Sentence completion tests your vocabulary knowledge. Each question gives you one or two blanks that need to be filled in with the correct word. The Question of the Day focuses on both areas to ensure that you receive practice to successfully complete this entire portion of the SAT.

By utilizing the Question of the Day, you will receive access to information regarding your performance. No matter how you answer, each question is followed up with an explanation about the correct option. From this page, you can also track your own personal progress and review previous questions you have answered. This will allow you to determine where your strengths and weaknesses lie, which will help you plan your studies to correlate with your needs. You will also have the ability to compare yourself to other students that have also answered the Question of the Day. The platform will show you the percentage of those who answered correctly, the average amount of time taken to provide an answer, and place you within a percentile. It is recommended that you participate on a regular basis; the more questions you answer, the more in-depth information you will be presented with.

As previously stated, the Question of the Day is only one of several study tools designed for your study use. In addition to the SAT Critical Reading Question of the Day and SAT Critical Reading tutoring, you may also want to consider taking some of our SAT Critical Reading practice tests. The entire set of Varsity Tutors’ Learning Tools is rounded out with flashcards, Learn by Concept, full-length practice tests that match the make-up of the actual SAT, and practice tests that focus in on specific topics. Each tool offers something different, therefore allowing you to build confidence and gain the correct knowledge needed for the SAT Critical Reading. By combining one or more of these tools, you have the ability to create a tailored study system to prepare you for test day.

Question of the Day: SAT Critical Reading

Adapted from The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells (1898)

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.

The planet Mars revolves about the sun at a mean distance of 140,000,000 miles, and the light and heat it receives from the sun is barely half of that received by this world. It must be, if the nebular hypothesis has any truth, older than our world; and long before this earth ceased to be molten, life upon its surface must have begun its course. The fact that it is scarcely one seventh of the volume of the earth must have accelerated its cooling to the temperature at which life could begin. It has air and water and all that is necessary for the support of animated existence. 

Since Mars is older than our earth, it necessarily follows that it is not only more distant from time's beginning but nearer its end. The cooling that must someday overtake our planet has already gone far indeed with our neighbor. In its equatorial region, the midday temperature barely approaches that of our coldest winter. Its air is much more attenuated than ours; its oceans have shrunk until they cover but a third of its surface. That last stage of exhaustion, which to us is still incredibly remote, has become a present-day problem for the inhabitants of Mars. The immediate pressure of necessity has brightened their intellects, enlarged their powers, and hardened their hearts. And looking across space with instruments, and intelligences such as we have scarcely dreamed of, they see, at its nearest distance only 35,000,000 of miles sunward of them, a morning star of hope, our own warmer planet, green with vegetation and grey with water, with a cloudy atmosphere eloquent of fertility, with glimpses through its drifting cloud wisps of broad stretches of populous country and narrow, navy-crowded seas.

And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them at least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us. The intellectual side of man already admits that life is an incessant struggle for existence, and it would seem that this too is the belief of the minds upon Mars. Their world is far gone in its cooling and this world is still crowded with life, but crowded only with what they regard as inferior animals. To carry warfare sunward is, indeed, their only escape from the destruction that, generation after generation, creeps upon them.

And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon itself. The Tasmanians were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?

The “nebular hypothesis” supports the assertion that __________.

Earth is older than its moon

Earth’s moon is older than Mars

Earth is older than Mars

Mars is older than Earth

the sun is older than all of the planets that orbit it in this solar system

You can use the SAT Critical Reading Question of the Day to get into the habit of thinking about SAT Critical Reading content on a daily basis when studying for the SAT. Varsity Tutors' SAT Critical Reading Questions of the Day are drawn from each topic and question type covered on the Critical Reading section of the SAT.

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