How To Build An Infinity Mirror

The biggest PC stories of E3 2011

It’s been a very busy year for PC news at E3. All last week we were bombarded with new trailers, announcements, screenshots and interviews from LA. We got to see some of the most exciting games of the next few years demoed right before our eyes. You can find all of our E3 2011 posts right here . If you don’t fancy clicking through five days of madness, we’ve compiled the biggest stories of this year’s conference into one post with links to all the best trailers, screens and stories of the show.

Multiplication by Infinity: Mirrors

Some animals never seem to learn that mirror images are illusions. A parakeet, for example, is endlessly fascinated by what it sees in the reflecting toys placed inside its cage. It is hard to know what goes on within a bird’s brain, but the parakeet’s behavior suggests that it thinks it is seeing another bird. Adult cats, dogs, and other mammals are curiously indifferent to mirrors. Perhaps they learn quickly that the images are not substantial because they have no smell. Young chimpanzees, on the other hand, become excited and thoroughly mystified the first time they see themselves in a mirror. If the mirror is vertical, in the middle of a room or grassy area, they keep jumping behind it to find the other chimp, then jump back again to look in the mirror and see the chimp who so mysteriously vanishes and reappears. Older chimpanzees with play for hours with a pocket mirror. They make faces at themselves. They use the mirror for looking at things behind them. They will study the way an object looks when seen directly and ten compare it with how the same object looks in a mirror. They use mirrors to groom parts of themselves they cannot see, to pick food from their teeth, and so on. If an anesthetized chimp is painted around an ear with a bright-red dye that is odorless and nonirritating, on being awakened the chimp will see the spot in a mirror and try to rub it off. Apes who have been taught to use hand signs will make a sign that means “me” when asked whom they see in a mirror. Clearly they know that the image is not that of another chimp. All this strongly suggests that the great apes are to some degree aware of their own identity. True, a pigeon can be trained to peck at a spot of dye it can see only in a mirror, but pigeons can be trained to do all sorts of meaningless things. Let me try to confuse you with a simple question. Why does a mirror reverse only left and right sides of things, not up and down? Think this over carefully. The mirror’s surface is perfectly smooth and flat. Its left and right sides do not differ in any way from its top and bottom portions. If it is capable of transposing the left side of your body to the right, and the right to the left, why doesn’t it also switch your head and feet? Each line in the reverse stanza of “Jabberwocky” reads from right to left. Viewed in the mirror the lines read from left to right, but why does the top line remain on top, the bottom line on the bottom?

Popular Mechanics

Radio-electronics

Popular Mechanics

Popular mechanics

Popular Mechanics