<p>I cannot understand the sentence, especially started from “in aspect as to…”. Can anyone help me make it clear? THX</p>
<p>Indeed, what might Mercator have thought were it suggested to him that his scheme would one day be used to plot landscapes so far from terrestrial in aspect as to reflect back, in their magnificent alienness, the very idea of an old and exhausted Earth?</p>
<p>This is an excerpt from 2009 Oct. SAT CR. Mercator was a guy who developed the “Mercator projection”, a way of mapping spherical planets on a single rectangular strip. It had been used to plot Earth landscapes but scientists in this passage applied it to other planets and satellites.</p>
<p>The sentence means:</p>
<p>If someone told Mercator that his scheme would one day (in the far future–meaning NOW) be used to map planets that are so far away and so un-earth-like that they resemble a uninhabited, lifeless earths, what might he have thought about that claim?</p>
<p>“Aspect’ in this sentence means ‘appearance’. It is the word’s second definition. The grammatical unit in the sentence is: 'landscapes so far from terrestrial in aspect…” or ‘so far from earth-like in appearance’. The ‘as to’ begins the next semantic unit. How far from earth-like in appearance? So far as to reflect back (in their alien desolation) the idea that one day an old and worn-out Earth may look the same.</p>
<p>I recommend breaking up each part of the sentence and evaluating it piece by piece. It becomes easier to understand once you transcribe it slowly.</p>
<p>Its so funny how standardized tests always contain these type of convoluted passages, but when we write like this in essays, it is frowned upon.</p>
<p>Thanks, you guys answers really help me a lot to get it right!</p>