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A Confused Question
February 21, 2011 at 6:40 am
(This post was last modified: February 21, 2011 at 6:41 am by Edwardo Piet.)
If two identical mirrors were opposite each other and completely level, doesn't that create an infinite chain of images?
And if so, assuming that this universe is finite, how is it possible to have an infinity of anything - including an infinite image of mirrors - in a finite universe?
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RE: A Confused Question
February 21, 2011 at 7:04 am
Plank length is the limit.
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RE: A Confused Question
February 21, 2011 at 7:53 am
I don't understand what a plank has got to do with this.
I'm talking about reflections in two identical mirrors that go on for infinity when faced off against each other.
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RE: A Confused Question
February 21, 2011 at 8:03 am
(This post was last modified: February 21, 2011 at 8:04 am by Violet.)
He means that the reflections cannot get any smaller than that (being the smallest unit possible). Perfectly understandable. Means that there are not infinite reflections.
Please give me a home where cloud buffalo roam
Where the dear and the strangers can play
Where sometimes is heard a discouraging word
But the skies are not stormy all day
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RE: A Confused Question
February 21, 2011 at 8:11 am
The images reflected will get smaller and smaller until they reach the 'width' of a photon, you can't have any more than that.
Even if it was to go on forever you wouldn't see infinity, say for instance the mirrors are 1 meter apart. that means you will get 297,000,000 images per second, that number is never going to get to infinity as you know.
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RE: A Confused Question
February 21, 2011 at 8:56 am
If you could have infinitely small images and time doesn't end it would.
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RE: A Confused Question
February 21, 2011 at 9:06 am
Aha, and that way it could fit in a finite universe? Because the images were infinitely small? Sounds hilarious. I don't know why, but that amuses me.
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RE: A Confused Question
February 21, 2011 at 9:44 am
I think that works... But then again if time is infinite it's not a finite universe anyway...
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RE: A Confused Question
February 21, 2011 at 12:00 pm
(This post was last modified: February 21, 2011 at 12:00 pm by Edwardo Piet.)
Presuming that time is part of the universe and not "outside of it" whatever that would mean, like God is so often claimed to be.
If the universe is used to mean the whole of existence, then how can there ever be said to be a multiverse? All the little pseudo-universes together would constitute the proper "real" universe.
