Daecon

Actually the Universe looks billions of years old but is only about 9 months older than I am.

Or he could have just counted the list of names in the geneology of Jesus (41 in Matthew and 77 in Luke) and averaged them with expected birth-to-fathering lifespans.

And how, exactly, do you propose "gravitational containment of nuclear fusion" would work?

Only 2% of babies born at full term were virgins?

"Universe" literally MEANS "everything". You're using the wrong word.

The Big Bang theory is an explanation to account for observed facts such as the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, the abundance of lighter elements in the Universe, the large-scale structure of the Universe, and Hubble's Law. Wikipedia has a good article at https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang It's strongly supported by most people only because it's strongly supported by observational evidence.

They say that necessity is the mother of invention. I wonder if necessity is also the mother of language? Of course it's sensible that a proper language should be able to convey any needed information, but then animals don't seem to have a need for any complex instruction and perhaps that's why their "language" is so limited? If a particular animal group's situation were to change, I wonder if their communication capability would also increase over successive generations? At what point would we be comfortable in stating "now these creatures have a language"?

I guess the Y chromosome is dominant and so overpowers any haemophilia effect on the X chromosome?

That's true. I was recently re-watching an old episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, "The Measure of a Man", in which the android crewmember Data had to legally prove himself to be a sentient person. It got me thinking, how exactly would a flesh-and-blood Human go about proving to others that they themselves were properly sentient? And if you can't do that for yourself, how could you prove sentience in other people, or even animals? We take it on faith that other Humans are sentient, but how could we provide conclusive proof of that?

At what stage of development does the lethality usually occur in females?

I wonder if there's also a requirement that the entity in question should be capable of experiencing "qualia", which I believe is roughly defined as the experience of sensation (for example, the taste of chocolate, or the smell of a flower, or seeing the colours in a rainbow). Although that may be more on the philosophical side of consciousness rather than a scientific definition.

I think the word you're looking for is sapient.

That makes me think of an interesting point. Would a bee's "waggle dance" count as a language? Perhaps we should have a new thread about what constitutes a language?

I haven't been following the thread, but I believe "Human Group Fallacy" is a mistranslation of argumentum ad populum.

Please tell me the OP is, like, 18 days late?

Why not?

Um... what?

What text? We have no idea what you're looking at so how can anyone know the answer?

Today I learned a new word, courtesy of Strange: Prevaricating. (To act or speak in an evasive way.)

Then why haven't they already done so?

Free? Sounds like a swindle.

What about forcefields?

[shameless plug] There's a thread about Dragon's Egg in the Book Talk subforum. [/shameless plug]

We already have those, they're of the "idle" genre.

What exactly does each method mean and how do they work?