Any Plausibility To This? Part 2

[Johnny Pneumatic]

Is there any plausibility to these sci-fi concepts.....someday? Tractor beams, Star Trek style matter replicators(they are supposed to convert raw energy into whatever chemical elements and compounds are needed to form an object), teleporters, being able to manipulate gravity(shield a craft against gravitational fields so they float and can thus reach space easily, tear builings apart with gravity weapons etc.) and if Higgs Bosons turn out to exist could it be possible that we could find a way to turn off and on an object's mass?

[Zombified]

Tractor beams: probably not, unless we can gain some kind of control over gravity. Gravity manipulation in general would very difficult without discovering some sort of particle or form of matter that we've go no clue about now.

Replicators: maybe we can build nano-tech assemblers that construct things atom-by-atom or from very simple components. It might not be the most efficient way to do things, and you'd have people worrying about the "grey goo" problem...

Teleporters: a long shot, though maybe not as long as gravity control. Teleportation experiments probably won't scale up to very large macroscopic objects. If they do, you'd probably need a lot of equipment on the receiving end as well. Also, I'd be really worried about reliability... and if you could build one, could you convince Interesting Ian to try it?

Turning mass on and off: I think very likely not. I expect physics will always obey conservation of energy and momentum. Turning mass off without violating these conservation rules would involve immense amounts of energy.

[MESchlum]

If you must play with gravity, you need to know what it "looks" like. We're getting there... One of the upcoming experiments to be is LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna), which will be looking for gravity waves. Strong ones. As in what you get when two large (rotating) black holes meet. Fun stuff.

That may get the first part down (knowing more about "gravitons" or whatever turns up). Manipulating one, though... That's harder.

Of course, you could follow the "black goo" route. What is black goo? Well, grey goo is nanotech gone bad, turning everything in its path into grey goo. So black goo is microblack holes gone bad, doing much the same. But while it lasts, you'll be able to seriously mess with time, space, and gravity.

[Ladewig]

You can see what NASA says about it all here.

If you are really interested in the topic, get either Lawrence M. Krauss's books:
The Physics of Star Trek. or
Beyond Star Trek. The Physics of Star Trek, X-Files, Star Wars, and Independence Day.

or

The Biology of Star Trek by Susan C. Jenkins, Robert Jenkins (aka Life Signs: The Biology of Star Trek

or

To Seek Out New Life : The Biology of Star Trek by Athena Andreadis


............................

The part I found hardest to believe is that the transporter would work not just from one transporter to another, but from one transporter to anyplace within range. Imagine making a phone call to someone who was not next to a phone.

As for the commonly heard criticism that if they have mastered gene therapy to the point that they can turn a person back into a human after a strange virus turned that human into a reptile, why can't they grow hair on Picard's head; Patrick Stewart once responded, maybe they have outgrown prejudices against bald people. All I can say is "from his lips to God's ears."

[Xeriar]

Tractor Beams and gravity manipulation will probably be the same thing. We can control things with magnetic fields but that might disrupt what is trying to get captured.

I think gravity manipulation will come to be. If it is even in the remotest sense possible it will happen, it's just too damned useful. I don't think it will allow faster-than-light travel, but I can imagine it being used to construct gates between stars, massively reducing the distance between them.

Or allowing us to reach near-light speed without worrying about G-forces.

I think we will be able to replicate nearly any raw material up to the molecular level, but I'm not sure we'll be replicating, say, food. Drinks, certainly.

Force sheilds and phasers seem almost a given, as we're beginning to touch upon some of that now.

I highly doubt transporters as we see them in Star Trek will ever exist. Other stuff might mimic it, though.

Yes, a lot of this will take immense amounts of energy. Our Sun also wastes over a million exawatt-years a day. If this doesn't happen I'm not sure it will be for lack of resources.

[Johnny Pneumatic]

Quote:

Originally posted by Xeriar
I think we will be able to replicate nearly any raw material up to the molecular level, but I'm not sure we'll be replicating, say, food. Drinks, certainly.

Force sheilds and phasers seem almost a given, as we're beginning to touch upon some of that now.

If you could replicate the chemical elements you want straight from energy then nanites could do the rest of putting together whatever you're wanting.

What would a force field be anyway? A very strong electromagnetic field? As for phasers, they are shown as traveling very much below the speed of light. This means either they aren't electromagnetic radiation, or it's just pseudoscientific sublight speed radiation. Laser rifles are probably going to exist within a few decades. One thing I always need to keep in mind about Star Trek is that the 24 century will be nothing like that. No humanoid aliens, humans will have GEed themselves to such a degree that they will be aliens to us, their nanotechnology will be like magic to us etc. Star Trek to me is a moral lesson. Think about it, every show has a parallel to modern human problems; racism, destruction of forests, ozone layer, the Borg(which have interesting parallels with christianity) etc. Some modern technology is already as advanced as TNG's P.A.D.(think PDAs). Communicators(cellphone)

[TeaBag420]

Quote:

Originally posted by SkepticJ
If you could replicate the chemical elements you want straight from energy then nanites could do the rest of putting together whatever you're wanting.

What would a force field be anyway? A very strong electromagnetic field? As for phasers, they are shown as traveling very much below the speed of light. This means either they aren't electromagnetic radiation, or it's just pseudoscientific sublight speed radiation. Laser rifles are probably going to exist within a few decades. One thing I always need to keep in mind about Star Trek is that the 24 century will be nothing like that. No humanoid aliens, humans will have GEed themselves to such a degree that they will be aliens to us, their nanotechnology will be like magic to us etc. Star Trek to me is a moral lesson. Think about it, every show has a parallel to modern human problems; racism, destruction of forests, ozone layer, the Borg(which have interesting parallels with christianity) etc. Some modern technology is already as advanced as TNG's P.A.D.(think PDAs). Communicators(cellphone)

blah blah blah the communicators on star trek work from the surface of a randomly selected planet to a ship orbiting said planet sans repeaters or satellites. They're not real but they're not cellphones. Keep jackin'.

[Johnny Pneumatic]

Quote:

Originally posted by TeaBag420
blah blah blah the communicators on star trek work from the surface of a randomly selected planet to a ship orbiting said planet sans repeaters or satellites. They're not real but they're not cellphones. Keep jackin'.

You have heard of Iridium phones? They are expensive, but you can make a call from just about anywhere.

[Mongpoovian]

Tractor beam = Optical tweezers?

These things can only move cells as of yet, but it's an interesting concept...

[Matabiri]

Quote:

Originally posted by SkepticJ
You have heard of Iridium phones? They are expensive, but you can make a call from just about anywhere.

They use satellites in low-earth orbit.

[exarch]

Quote:

Originally posted by Matabiri
They use satellites in low-earth orbit.

And where, pray tell, is the ship the Star Trek characters are communicating with?

Right ...

[Matabiri]

Quote:

Originally posted by exarch
And where, pray tell, is the ship the Star Trek characters are communicating with?

Right ...

True'nuff. But communicators can also, apparently, communicate with the ship at all times, whereas in reality the ship would be shielded by the planet at least half of the time (what's a standard low earth orbit? 2 hours?), and thus require said satellites or repeaters for reliable communication.

Edit to add: you could claim that, on reaching a planet, the Enterprise "seeds" selected orbits with communications repeaters to allow this, and either abandons them or recaptures them prior to leaving orbit. They wouldn't have to be very big or complicated. However, I don't think this is mentioned.

[exarch]

Quote:

Originally posted by Matabiri
True'nuff. But communicators can also, apparently, communicate with the ship at all times, whereas in reality the ship would be shielded by the planet at least half of the time (what's a standard low earth orbit? 2 hours?), and thus require said satellites or repeaters for reliable communication.

I think they are supposed to be communicating through subspace signals as well. Or is that only long range communication?
Anyway, you're quite right, communication with something that's across the horizon would be quite impossible, unless you could somehow reflect the signal off something (upper atmosphere? But then you'd have to find a way to make the signal pass through the upper atmosphere the 2nd time to be able to reach the ship), or simply put the ship in a geostationary orbit.

[Johnny Pneumatic]

It isn't, communicators work out of the bounds of physics, just like other stuff in the show.

If communicators used neutrinos instead of electromagnetic radiation to communicate then couldn't they work like the show's? Most of the neutrinos from the sun that come this way fly right through the earth.

[Matabiri]

Quote:

Originally posted by SkepticJ
If communicators used neutrinos instead of electromagnetic radiation to communicate then couldn't they work like the show's? Most of the neutrinos from the sun that come this way fly right through the earth.

And your communicator would have to be more than 10m across, filled with water or similar, and would suffer massive interference from any stray radiation at all. Neutrinos interact very weakly with normal matter, which is why they pass through the Earth, and why they're so hard to detect.

[Xeriar]

Quote:

Originally posted by SkepticJ
If you could replicate the chemical elements you want straight from energy then nanites could do the rest of putting together whatever you're wanting.

Eventually, though I expect nanites will turn out to be optomized bacterium.

Certainly no *poof* steak. Rather, a bunch of lipids and plasma get assembled, and the 'nanites' grow and cook the steak over a half hour or so.

Quote:

What would a force field be anyway? A very strong electromagnetic field?

Probably a combination of that with an artificial ionized plasma atmosphere. It might be possible to direct it strongly enough that it could actually act as a physical wall.

There has also been talk of quantum dots - basically, forming electron shell configurations without the nucleus. I can see Star Trek 'brig' force fields from this, at least.

Quote:

As for phasers, they are shown as traveling very much below the speed of light. This means either they aren't electromagnetic radiation, or it's just pseudoscientific sublight speed radiation. Laser rifles are probably going to exist within a few decades.

Nothing that shows color or any crap like that, true - though there might be a bright flash and a thunderclap from rapidly ionizing the atmosphere it went through. If powerful enough, I could see such a flash happening in space.

Quote:

One thing I always need to keep in mind about Star Trek is that the 24 century will be nothing like that. No humanoid aliens, humans will have GEed themselves to such a degree that they will be aliens to us, their nanotechnology will be like magic to us etc. Star Trek to me is a moral lesson. Think about it, every show has a parallel to modern human problems; racism, destruction of forests, ozone layer, the Borg(which have interesting parallels with christianity) etc. Some modern technology is already as advanced as TNG's P.A.D.(think PDAs). Communicators(cellphone)

Indeed, though I imagine that if we do encounter sentient aliens, some will have a surprising number of biological features like ours.

[Johnny Pneumatic]

Quote:

Originally posted by Xeriar
There has also been talk of quantum dots - basically, forming electron shell configurations without the nucleus. I can see Star Trek 'brig' force fields from this, at least.

I never have understood the point of those. Power fails on the ship and uber bad guy escapes. What is wrong with bars made of matter? I mean come on!

[Johnny Pneumatic]

Quote:

Originally posted by Xeriar
Indeed, though I imagine that if we do encounter sentient aliens, some will have a surprising number of biological features like ours.

Beyond having some form of eyes and manipulators I'm at a loss to think of much else they'd have to have.

[Mongpoovian]

I bet the communicators would work through some sort of quantum entanglement. Particle A and B are entangled, and changes in state are reflected instantly in the other particle, no matter where it is.

[rppa]

Quote:

Originally posted by Matabiri
True'nuff. But communicators can also, apparently, communicate with the ship at all times, whereas in reality the ship would be shielded by the planet at least half of the time (what's a standard low earth orbit? 2 hours?), and thus require said satellites or repeaters for reliable communication.

Edit to add: you could claim that, on reaching a planet, the Enterprise "seeds" selected orbits with communications repeaters to allow this, and either abandons them or recaptures them prior to leaving orbit. They wouldn't have to be very big or complicated. However, I don't think this is mentioned.

Cool real-life stuff: We now have interplanetary communication networks. As the discussion here has pointed out, you can't talk via line of sight with something on the other side of a planet from you. So we now have a network of communication satellites ON MARS to support ground missions there. For work I had occasion recently to read up on the interplanetary communication protocols.

It's here if you're interested: http://www.dtnrg.org/
and here:
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2004...ary_netwk.html

[Matabiri]

Quote:

Originally posted by rppa
Cool real-life stuff: We now have interplanetary communication networks. As the discussion here has pointed out, you can't talk via line of sight with something on the other side of a planet from you. So we now have a network of communication satellites ON MARS to support ground missions there. For work I had occasion recently to read up on the interplanetary communication protocols.

Ace. Who says science doesn't know anything? TAKE THAT, NAYSAYERS!

[Xeriar]

Quote:

Originally posted by Mongpoovian
I bet the communicators would work through some sort of quantum entanglement. Particle A and B are entangled, and changes in state are reflected instantly in the other particle, no matter where it is.

No, entangled particles essentially exist in an unknown state, it's just garaunteed that, if split, they will collapse in the same manner. No information is transmitted.

Quote:

Originally posted by SkepticJ
I never have understood the point of those. Power fails on the ship and uber bad guy escapes. What is wrong with bars made of matter? I mean come on!

I think they'd make good replacements for screens and other window overlays though.

Quote:

Beyond having some form of eyes and manipulators I'm at a loss to think of much else they'd have to have.

Many parts of our body that are easily variable in an evolutionary sense are tuned towards optimality - our fingerbones follow the golden ratio, allowing us to make fists. Pinkies are optional but at least the ringfinger helps tremendously with tool use (including beating people with sharp things).

I recall reading that 46% of the sun's emitted energy is in the visable spectrum - while it is certainly true that other stars will have different ranges, I wouldn't be surprised to find that the eyes of some species will overlap nicely with our own.

Spoken language was the impetus for our eventual civilization, even if it took 60,000 years.

Unless we discover something completely new, any life we are going to find will be either carbon based or artificial. Silicon can't make as complex structures as carbon can.

As you might know, there are a lot of bases - not just ATCG and U and their various minor derivatives. It's suspected, though, that the ATGC scheme won out because it was more efficient than the competition.

[exarch]

Quote:

Originally posted by SkepticJ
Beyond having some form of eyes and manipulators I'm at a loss to think of much else they'd have to have.

Why eyes?

[Johnny Pneumatic]

Quote:

Originally posted by Xeriar
Many parts of our body that are easily variable in an evolutionary sense are tuned towards optimality - our fingerbones follow the golden ratio, allowing us to make fists. Pinkies are optional but at least the ringfinger helps tremendously with tool use (including beating people with sharp things).

I recall reading that 46% of the sun's emitted energy is in the visable spectrum - while it is certainly true that other stars will have different ranges, I wouldn't be surprised to find that the eyes of some species will overlap nicely with our own.

Spoken language was the impetus for our eventual civilization, even if it took 60,000 years.

Unless we discover something completely new, any life we are going to find will be either carbon based or artificial. Silicon can't make as complex structures as carbon can.

As you might know, there are a lot of bases - not just ATCG and U and their various minor derivatives. It's suspected, though, that the ATGC scheme won out because it was more efficient than the competition.

This assumes that the organism has a skeleton of bones. Why not a hydrostatic skeleton? Ok, picture this. You're on a planet that has 7/10ths of a g of gravity, the atmosphere has thirteen times as much carbon dioxide in its atmosphere than earth. Only twenty percent of the planet is land, the rest is very shallow and earth-like deep ocean. The sentient civilisation you discover walks on six thick hydrostatic tentacles. The ends of the legs end in a radial arrangement of fingers. Perhaps the fingers have something like the erectile tissue in penises that become hard so the fingers can act like they have bones inside them. The fingers have suckers like an octopuss or perhaps setae adhesive on them. This creature has both lung-like organs and gills. Think of something like a cross between a lungfish and an octopi. It has four eyes, all of them on hydrostatic stalks like snales have. Vision is in IR through weak UV. Their language is a combo of sign language using their fingers, complex patterns with chromatophores, smells and high pitched clicking noises.

[Johnny Pneumatic]

Quote:

Originally posted by exarch
Why eyes?

Imagine how hard it would be to conduct physics experiments when you can't see what is happening. Echolocation could partly take vision's place but you'd not be able to see colors. Blind astronomers would have a hard time. You also couldn't study micro organisms if you're blind. Vision works over great distances to, echolocation falls off fast.

[Xeriar]

Quote:

Originally posted by SkepticJ
This assumes that the organism has a skeleton of bones. Why not a hydrostatic skeleton? Ok, picture this. You're on a planet that has 7/10ths of a g of gravity, the atmosphere has thirteen times as much carbon dioxide in its atmosphere than earth. Only twenty percent of the planet is land, the rest is very shallow and earth-like deep ocean. The sentient civilisation you discover walks on six thick hydrostatic tentacles. The ends of the legs end in a radial arrangement of fingers. Perhaps the fingers have something like the erectile tissue in penises that become hard so the fingers can act like they have bones inside them. The fingers have suckers like an octopuss or perhaps setae adhesive on them. This creature has both lung-like organs and gills. Think of something like a cross between a lungfish and an octopi. It has four eyes, all of them on hydrostatic stalks like snales have. Vision is in IR through weak UV. Their language is a combo of sign language using their fingers, complex patterns with chromatophores, smells and high pitched clicking noises.

That might be hard to develop the same amount of coordination our fingers do. The erectile tissue of reptiles is apparently much sturdier though, and attaching ligaments to something like that might work.

Dolphin males grab objects with their penis, so hey.

Clicking might actually be the original language of humans, even.

Pheremones can only convey so much - ultimately, they blend together, are carried off by wind or water, etc. and are generally unreliable for coordinating large numbers of individuals.

[Johnny Pneumatic]

Quote:

Originally posted by Xeriar
[b]That might be hard to develop the same amount of coordination our fingers do.

Explain.

[Xeriar]

Quote:

Originally posted by SkepticJ
Explain.

Ligaments join bones. Straight, hard, etc. Getting a fluid sac to be as hard as bone is going to take some work, especially if you're worried about rupturing and other damage. It needs to be vastly superior to erectile tissue because what we have can't support it for days on end.

So it's either temporary, weak, or going be something not too far removed from bone. Anyone know how bone evolved anyway?

I think coordination is a poorer term than the strength and speed of that coordination, since our fingers are controlled through their ligaments and such.

Unfortunately for my arguement, that just means the kinds of tools we use and the kind of skill with which we wield them.

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Quote:

Originally posted by SkepticJ
...and if Higgs Bosons turn out to exist...

Damn, I thought that said Higgs Bosoms. But since it doesn't, I'm not interested in this thread.

[Johnny Pneumatic]

Quote:

Originally posted by Xeriar
[b]I think coordination is a poorer term than the strength and speed of that coordination, since our fingers are controlled through their ligaments and such.

You've never seen an octopi in action have you? I suggest you watch some videos of them opening shells, grabbing lobsters etc. on National Geographic. Elephant trunks are only muscular limbs to. They are highly dexterous. Imagine one that is tipped in six fingers that are like mini trunks. exoskeletons need not be made of chitin. What if an alien "bug" had a paper-thin exoskeleton made of a silk composite. This "exobug" breaths using something like book lungs and can thus grow taller than the meter in height earth "bugs" are limited to. Lesser gravity would also allow them to be even bigger than that. Maybe the planet has about 6/10ths of earth's gravity but its atmosphere is much thicker because of a huge amount of carbon dioxide in it. The planet is farther from its G3 star than earth is. These "exobugs" take advantage of the combo of very thick air and low gravity to fly much easier than earth insects do. Low gravity without high amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere would be harder on flying creatures than earth's because the air would be thinner due to lower gravity and thus much harder to generate lift. This is fun. What about starting a thread on speculating about exobiology? An antithesis is needed for the huge headed humanoid woo woo "aliens".

[Matabiri]

Quote:

Originally posted by SkepticJ
What about starting a thread on speculating about exobiology? An antithesis is needed for the huge headed humanoid woo woo "aliens".

How about silicon-chemistry base life-forms?

If you're thinking about zenobiology, how about considering how life/replication could have started - i.e. what is the base replication system? DNA can't be the only solution... so what else? And what methods of obtaining energy are there - aliens might not need lungs at all; they might have two liquid chemicals they can react at will.

[Xeriar]

Quote:

Originally posted by SkepticJ
You've never seen an octopi in action have you? I suggest you watch some videos of them opening shells, grabbing lobsters etc. on National Geographic.

I have (the shark-hunting octopus is my favorite), but I can open shells with my fingers too, and I don't even have those handy suckers. Are they really stronger, pound for pound above water? All things included, of course.

Quote:

Elephant trunks are only muscular limbs to. They are highly dexterous. Imagine one that is tipped in six fingers that are like mini trunks.

That would be very impressive, but said trunk weighs 150 kg yet can only lift 250. That's a lot of muscle that does no more than just support itself - it's clearly feasible as part of the animal, but the entire animal is going to take a lot of energy (incidentally, african elephants have two finger-like things on the end of their trunks, as you suggest).

Quote:

exoskeletons need not be made of chitin. What if an alien "bug" had a paper-thin exoskeleton made of a silk composite. This "exobug" breaths using something like book lungs and can thus grow taller than the meter in height earth "bugs" are limited to. Lesser gravity would also allow them to be even bigger than that.

'bugs' attach their muscles to their exoskeleton, I'm not sure why, but they are actually significantly weaker than endoskeletons - even humans, by far the weakest of the great apes, are stronger via the square/cube law than any insect.

A true circulatory system is also much more efficient, as all of the blood gets recharged with oxygen, not just whatever happens to wander past the skin or lung.

Not that it's infeasible, but I think that as size increases, the need for efficiency also increases.

Quote:

Maybe the planet has about 6/10ths of earth's gravity but its atmosphere is much thicker because of a huge amount of carbon dioxide in it. The planet is farther from its G3 star than earth is. These "exobugs" take advantage of the combo of very thick air and low gravity to fly much easier than earth insects do. Low gravity without high amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere would be harder on flying creatures than earth's because the air would be thinner due to lower gravity and thus much harder to generate lift.

Why would it be harder? You only need enough gravity to trap vaporous nitrogen reliably, which I think works out to about 1/3rd G. The only real problem with smaller planets is that they cool faster. Less dense planets are also going to have fewer heavy minerals in their crust for species on them to exploit (we are quite gifted with Earth...)

Quote:

This is fun. What about starting a thread on speculating about exobiology? An antithesis is needed for the huge headed humanoid woo woo "aliens".

Woo woo :-) Sure.

Quote:

How about silicon-chemistry base life-forms?

Silicon forms weaker bonds than carbon - much weaker. Life on Earth is possible through carbon chains circles, and all sorts of fun things linked to carbon. I don't think silicon can even form lipid-like chains, much less something like DNA.

That aside, there are also two other important points -
1: Carbon is more common and
2: SO2 is sand, not a gas.

Quote:

If you're thinking about zenobiology, how about considering how life/replication could have started - i.e. what is the base replication system? DNA can't be the only solution... so what else? And what methods of obtaining energy are there - aliens might not need lungs at all; they might have two liquid chemicals they can react at will.

Why can't it be? There are other bases, they all, some claim, existed in the Pre-RNA stage of abiogenesis, but for some reason the DNA/RNA pair won out.

Our cells combine ATP with oxygen to produce absolutely massive amounts of energy. It's combining two substances at will already - it just happens that ATP and oxygen are an insanely efficient combination.

[Johnny Pneumatic]

ok, I started a thread on exobiology/xenoscience.

[Johnny Pneumatic]

Could you please link some articles on quantum dots and tell me more about them? How is it possible to have an electron shell without an atomic nucleus? How strongly do they bond with each other? Are they like magnetic fields in that even the heat of plasma doesn't destroy them?

[Xeriar]

Quote:

Originally posted by SkepticJ
Could you please link some articles on quantum dots and tell me more about them? How is it possible to have an electron shell without an atomic nucleus? How strongly do they bond with each other? Are they like magnetic fields in that even the heat of plasma doesn't destroy them?

I'll need to find the articles I read off of Ars Technica. This:
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definit...518016,00.html

States the obvious. Not all quantum dots need be atoms and it's possible to make such things using magnetic fields.

In any case, they have the same properties atoms do - they just have a fraction of the mass and require energy to keep stabalized.

[Johnny Pneumatic]

Quote:

Originally posted by Xeriar
States the obvious. Not all quantum dots need be atoms and it's possible to make such things using magnetic fields.

In any case, they have the same properties atoms do - they just have a fraction of the mass and require energy to keep stabalized.

Make what things?


What happens when the power is turned off?

If they only have a fraction of the mass then shouldn't it be possible to make quantum dots that have a much larger valence shell (and the shell is really starved for electrons) and can thus bond with other quantum dots with tens or hundreds of covalent bonds? Is there an upper limit?

[Matabiri]

Quote:

Originally posted by SkepticJ
Are they like magnetic fields in that even the heat of plasma doesn't destroy them?

Plasma almost always generates powerful magnetic fields, as it contains moving electrical charges.

Due to these, JET jumps noticably during test shots.

[exarch]

Quote:

Originally posted by SkepticJ
Imagine how hard it would be to conduct physics experiments when you can't see what is happening. Echolocation could partly take vision's place but you'd not be able to see colors. Blind astronomers would have a hard time. You also couldn't study micro organisms if you're blind. Vision works over great distances to, echolocation falls off fast.

So you are talking about eyes in a very general sense (i.e. not restricted to sensory organs that use lenses to register visible light). In that case I agree.