SamTherapy opened this issue on Dec 27, 2009 · 81 posts
SamTherapy posted Sun, 27 December 2009 at 10:14 PM
A little experiment for you:
You have a torch and a mirror. You place the mirror on one wall of a room which is, say 10 ft sq. You place the torch, facing the mirror, at the opposite side of the room. You and a friend stand, one to the left and one to the right of the mirror, looking towards it so that, when you look in, you can see the reflection of the torch beam shining in there.
Gonna digress a little to explain that a more refined version of this experiment (and several variations thereof) have been performed with lasers in black rooms with near as dammit optically perfect reflectors, photon emittors, sensors and heaven knows what. For this, though, you really don't need 'em.
Right, so now you're looking in the mirror and you see the reflection, ok? To you, it's in a relatively different place from your friend, due to the fact he/she is standing at the opposite side. That's perfectly normal and straightforward because that's what you expect. All is as it should be.
We were all taught that there's such a thing as a "virtual image", which accounts for the position of a reflected image, as if it was an object in true 3D space. Sad thing is, that's not the case. It's a convenient fiction - and it's become quite recently demonstrably so - that skips over what's really happening when we see a reflection.
You see, there is no "virtual image" because there's no 3D space inside the mirror. The reflections are all happening on a plane surface with absolutely no depth. Which means, amongst other things, you are getting two reflections for the price of one. You can only see one at a time but they are there. Your friend will confirm the presence of the other one. Change positions to check if you like but it'll be there. Which is impossible, since there is only one light source and there's nothing else to reflect off. Oh dear, a fundamental part of our understanding just rolled over and died.
Now, someone is going to come back and say something like "quantum" or "Heisenberg" and I'm going to say "nope" because quantum stuff and the uncertainty principle aren't supposed to apply to the macro universe and if they do, the theories themselves are in need of some serious revision. Don't even bother to mention superposition because that's a hotly disputed and largely anecdotal hypothesis and string/superstring is pretty much discredited and/or disregarded.
Anyone who posts a like to the Superscience show will be tarred, feathered, laughed at and generally become the object of scorn and ridicule for the rest of their lives.
I bet BB has a shader for it, though.
Coppula eam se non posit acceptera jocularum.