Astronomers are confident that the star Betelgeuse
will eventually consume all the helium in its core and
explode in a supernova. They are much less
confident, however, about when this will happen,
since that depends on internal characteristics of
Betelgeuse that are largely unknown. Astrophysicist
Sarafina El-Badry Nance and colleagues recently
investigated whether acoustic waves in the star could
be used to determine internal stellar states but
concluded that this method could not sufficiently
reveal Betelgeuse's internal characteristics to allow its
evolutionary state to be firmly fixed.
Which choice best describes the function of the
second sentence in the overall structure of the text?
A) It explains how the work of Nance and
colleagues was received by others in the field.
B) It presents the central finding reported by Nance
and
colleagues.
C) It identifies the problem that Nance and
colleagues attempted to solve but did not.
D) It describes a serious limitation of the method
used by Nance and colleagues.
