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Re:Mathematician Wins $3M Prize for 'Magic Wand Theorem' by thaumasiotes on Saturday September 07, 2019 @03:42PM (#20906032)
I don't think perfect mirrors affect the result. The problem statement reminded me that there is a strain of astronomy that wonders why the sky is dark at night, given that, as best we can determine, no matter what direction you're looking in, you're looking directly at a star distant from you.

Of course that star is generally very far away. An ordinary inverse-square law has no trouble explaining why the influence of the light it's shining on you is negligible. A stream-of-particles theory of light has more trouble explaining that.

This result shows that at any point in a mirrored room, there is always a path that allows you to "directly" view any other point in the room. The more perfect the mirrors are, the more direct your view is; absolutely perfect mirrors bring you up to, but not beyond, the limit case where you're just looking at the candle without benefit of mirrors, as is the case for stars. But (I assume) the result doesn't show that a candle is actually able to illuminate a room regardless of luminosity (and, by implication, that the night sky is bright rather than dark).

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