The compound noun in the sentence is A. life cycles.
<u>A compound noun is a word formed by two or more words</u>. The first one generally indicates the type of object/person; in other words, it classifies the object or person presented in the second word. Furthermore, compound nouns have a different meaning than the meaning of the two words taken separately.
In this sentence,<u> "life cycles" is a compound noun because it has been formed with the words "life" and "cycles", which are also two nouns.</u> "Life", in this case, is indicating the kind of cycle that the sentence is referring to. In that way,<u> the compound noun "life cycles", defined as the series of stages that a living organism goes through during its whole life, does not have the same meaning than the words "life" and "cycles" taken alone</u>.
surely and definitely, certainly, absolutely,
Answer + Explanation:
The story is epistolary in nature, taking the form of a scientist's journal entry. The scientist is a member of a race of air-driven mechanical beings. The race obtains air from swappable lungs filled with pressurized air (argon) from underground. When it is realized that a number of clocks simultaneously appear to be running fast but they do not appear to be malfunctioning, the narrator decides to explore the explanation that people's brains are computing slower. The scientist dissects their own brain and discovers that it operates based on the movement of air through gold leaves. The scientist hypothesizes that others' brains are computing slower because rising atmospheric pressure causes air to pass through the leaves at a slower rate, and that the subterranean supply of argon will eventually be depleted, equalizing the pressure between the two atmospheres.