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Other animals, particularly primates and monkeys, do show they know about fairness (see Moral Behaviour in Monkeys) and have a sense of right and wrong (see Can Animals be Moral? and The Bonobo & the Atheist). Even rats show clear evidence of altruistic behaviour (see Will You Rat Me Out?). The main difference seems to be the complexity and sophistication of our concepts of fairness and right & wrong - we have more advanced metacognition, which means we can reason about right and wrong.
No, not really; hearing voices is far more common than many people are aware - enough to be considered relatively normal, as is acting on odd or potentially harmful ideas. Doing both and getting away with it could be considered lucky...
I don't have enough of the details to judge, but (assuming your recall isn't distorted and your report is affected by confirmation bias - unwitting influences we're all subject to and are also more common than many suppose), it seems unusual rather than unnatural; unnatural is just how you interpret it.
Saturn is a gas giant, less dense than water - we don't know if it has a core, but there's water throughout its gas layers (see Water on Saturn - section 'Mystery Solved').
Yes there is evidently quite a few. The nearest one is only 4.2 light years away near alpha Centauri Bb. But at our current speed it could take about 165,000 years to get there. They say its not suitable for life anyway as it orbits to close to its star. But they think there might be others. The next lot of about 50 odd are 15 light years away. So getting there would be the problem to confirm that there is water or life. Even so I would have thought being that close that the radio wave signals we have been sending out would have been received and responded to if there were life there.
It may be the latest for you, but the first known mention of panspermia was by Anaxagoras the Greek philosopher - in the 5th century BC (!) Scientific versions of the idea became popular in the mid-19th century.
As far as I understand they are not sure. It could be another frozen chemical like methane. Even so how does life survive in these places. There is nothing there but ice which is well below any temperature life can survive. But chances are there will be all sorts of toxic chemicals. There wont be enough sunlight either as well as the many other things needed to sustain life.
Thats exactly right we dont know yet so it is all speculation in the mean time. But its in scientists interest to find life elsewhere. In fact they will be almost willing it into existence.
But you need an atmosphere to continue to produce water in the right amount and consistency. To be able to continue to feed the earth with water and not either dry it out or freeze it up. Even the earths tilt and orbit plays its part in getting the right climatic conditions. The wrong atmosphere and everything is frozen to the point where nothing can live or toasted to death. In fact it would get started in the first place.
Fair enough you learn some new everyday. But scientists went through their experimentation of trying to create life in a tube. Now they have been seriously trying for 50 or 60 years without much success or havnt come close to explaining how this can happen they are turning to this idea again more and more. Afterall it takes away the hassle of having to explain things and moves the problem further away. But if this is true and given that you say there is water in many parts of the universe I would expect that there would be ample life out there in one form or another. Afterall if the ingredients for life happen to fall on out planet which was exactly just right for harboring it then you would have to say that there must have been many other planets which didn't succeed. Otherwise what are the chances of all the ingredients for life falling on one planet out of billions which happened to end up with the right conditions for creating that life.
No, as I said, it's liquid water. Great geysers of water burst from cracks in the surface ice. I notice salty liquid water on Ganymede has now been confirmed via Hubble.
No, there's vast amounts of liquid water.
Why?
Sunlight isn't necessary. There's life on Earth that never sees sunlight or uses the products of sunlight.
No, you don't. The consistency of water required is liquid water.
For you and me, yes; but some microbes don't need that.
We haven't yet tested for it beyond Mars.
Liquid water, you mean?
No, you don't.
Weather doesn't create oxygen and isn't necessary for the creation of oxygen; and oxygen isn't necessary for life - in fact it's toxic to some life. Ever hear of anaerobic bacteria?
Half the planets in the solar system are not rocky, they're gaseous, and we don't yet know if any have life.
No thats not true. Many scientists recognize the fine tuning principle of our universe and life. There are many constants that point to this fine tuning. To many to be dismissing it as nothing special. Here are some but there are many more.
The criterion for vestigiality of is not whether it has a current function, but whether the primary original or ancestral function is retained; if a new function or a secondary function has replaced the original or primary function, the structure is vestigial with respect to that function. In the case of the appendix, it seems likely that it is a vestigial form of a cecum that functioned as an aid to cellulose (not chlorophyll) digestion in a mainly or wholly herbivorous ancestor, which no longer has that digestive function, but does have a role in the immune system and as a reservoir of gut bacteria. Whether the original cecum was larger is not clear, as it now appears that a cecum need not necessarily be larger.
