Mirrors

Well, technically, when you look at stars, you're seeing the past, essentially. Like some of the pictures Hubble has taken. Those pictures are basically what those galaxies looked like billions of years ago, since light takes so long to get here from there.

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Original post by Willbo Mirrors are pretty fun ... If I line up two mirror's to reflect in infinity, do I see the past then? Like a couple of million of billion reflections into the image, and let's pretend I could see that far into the mirror now. And if I take a photo of it, do I get a photo of the past that has happened? Made me kinda confused... - Patrik Willbo

The mirrors won't reflect into infinity, because some of the photons will be absorbed and converted to hit, instead of reemited.
Also, it is physically impossible to take a picture with the camera that can see the images reflected more then a few times (since the camera would have to perpendicular to one of the mirrors, and it would get in the way of the other mirror (or the other mirror would get in the way of the camera).

Cold_Steel, yeah. Knew that, just didn't think of it :D
Time to get some sleep I guess...

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Original post by Raduprv Quote: Original post by Willbo Mirrors are pretty fun ... If I line up two mirror's to reflect in infinity, do I see the past then? Like a couple of million of billion reflections into the image, and let's pretend I could see that far into the mirror now. And if I take a photo of it, do I get a photo of the past that has happened? Made me kinda confused... - Patrik Willbo The mirrors won't reflect into infinity, because some of the photons will be absorbed and converted to hit, instead of reemited. Also, it is physically impossible to take a picture with the camera that can see the images reflected more then a few times (since the camera would have to perpendicular to one of the mirrors, and it would get in the way of the other mirror (or the other mirror would get in the way of the camera).

You could hook up a camera to a tv (such that anything the camera sees goes on the TV). Technically this should derive the same effect. But unfortunately, the more parallel the camera lens gets with the TV, the more interference you get in the form of white noise. Some people think that when you do this, you can see ghosts form in the static, and (if I remember correctly) if you play the static sounds backwards, apparently ghosts speak to you.

Of course, I believe the existence of ghosts to be nonsense.

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Original post by CrimsonSun You could hook up a camera to a tv (such that anything the camera sees goes on the TV). Technically this should derive the same effect. But unfortunately, the more parallel the camera lens gets with the TV, the more interference you get in the form of white noise. Some people think that when you do this, you can see ghosts form in the static, and (if I remember correctly) if you play the static sounds backwards, apparently ghosts speak to you. Of course, I believe the existence of ghosts to be nonsense.

The only problem with this technique is that, besides for the white noise, the camera and TV have very very limited resolutions, compared to a good mirror. So anything more than 2-3 levels of recursion will be blurred bad, even on a HDTV with a good camera.

How many reflections would you get if you put the camera behind a glass in a dark room and in the other room was a mirror and the room was lit. This way the glass will be see through in one way but reflective in the other (thinking of police interrogation rooms).
I know it wouldn't be infinite, but the camera wouldn't get in the way, so do you think it might get more than 6 times back and forth? Although having nothing in the room makes it hard to tell how many times it reflects...