mjhjmtu

Based on a set of questions by Pavel Janicek about how to address and then monetize magic mirrors in today's modern world.

The short version of these magic mirrors is that any one magic mirror can make a 2-way connection to any other magic mirror by the user asking their mirror to connect to another mirror by its unique name.

Many of the answers to the monetization question suggest using mirrors to replace wires/fiber-optic cables/radio signals in current communication technology. The magic mirrors as described appear to:

• Not use any power (no apparent power source involved, no apparent degradation from use)


• Not have a limit on range (tested at 1500 km apart)


• Transmit both vision (which we've all assumed means light, the full EM spectrum) and sound in high or perfect fidelity


• Not require an infrastructure like wires or cell towers to carry a signal between mirrors


• Understand natural language in at least 5 languages and presumably any language spoken by a human


• Require a unique name, which can be any unintelligible combination of syllables, leaving an absurdly wide address space.


• Understand and correctly interpret drunkenly slurred as well as computer-generated speech. (They may possibly interpret unspoken intent in the speaker's mind, further testing is required.)

Magic mirrors can be created by an intelligent lay person (possibly on their first attempt; this was unclear) with $50 of materials and equipment in two hours' time. Those costs and requirements leave a huge potential for manufacturing optimization.

The first modern maker of these mirrors, Pavel J., discovered some ancient documents in Baba Yaga's house detailing how to make them. He has created a small number of mirrors and done some basic tests of their abilities. As with any other new technology, there are often limitations and/or drawbacks which are not apparent when the technology is first discovered but which become apparent as the technology becomes widespread. For example, radio signals have a practical limit to how many overlapping signals can exist simultaneously before they start interfering with each other. It wasn't an issue 100 years ago, but it sure is today.

What subtle limitations can be applied to how these mirrors function so that they are still quite useful, but not so overpowered that they turn civilization on its head?

Good answers will have one or more limitation which

• would not be immediately obvious to a lay person testing a handful of hand-made magic mirrors.


• would not curtail the mirrors' abilities so much that they become useless or worthless if patented and mass produced.


• will keep magic mirrors from directly causing modern society as we know it to cease to exist.


• is not easily overcome or bypassed (eg the mirrors output cancer-inducing radiation; easily overcome by adding radiation shielding).


• can't be misused by a mad scientist to easily destroy the world (eg duplicating photons in a loop to instantly create massive amounts of energy from nothing).


• (ideally) resolves magic mirrors initially appearing to break the 1st Law of Thermodynamics. (Note: perfect efficiency is ok, just no energy coming from nothing)


• cannot itself result in destruction of the world as we know it.

Answers will be judged on subtlety, simplicity, and robustness:

• Subtlety - is the drawback difficult to notice in initial tests? Would it have no appreciable effect on ancient usage?


• Simplicity - is the drawback fairly simple to explain and understand?


• Robustness - does the drawback just introduce new plot holes or break physics in new (if interesting) ways?

One of the ingredients of the magic mirror is:

- Half pint of blood of the maker.

Baba Yaga is a witch (as far as I remember), so it may sound logic she included some creepy ingredient in such a wonderful invention.

So the fabrication of the magic mirrors is limited by the amount of blood able to be retrieved from the makers in a month.

Magic Mirrors might have been a threat to technological civilization as recently as 10 years ago, but not now.

Problem is, they are obsolete point-to-point devices with analogous protocol. By contrast, most users today are utilizing their personal communication devices for connection with digital services like Facebook and texting. Magic mirrors may beat smartphones on price, but they won't be able to provide nearly the same level of functionality.

Magic Mirrors require a focus -- they need to be directly in front of a living being in order to maintain their connection. Some say this is because they are draining part of the soul of the person (or, in some cases, animal) they are centered on, others say that it's like a computer timing out if nobody moves the mouse for a while.

Functionally, this means you can watch somebody while they sleep, but you cannot connect to a mirror in outer space intending to pull unfiltered sunlight. Yes, you can move sunlight from a desert to a dark area, but only if you have someone standing around in the desert to be your mirror focus. And while they may get paid to be the focus for a few dozen mirrors at once, it's a hot, boring job, and that one time they needed to step away to go to the restroom, they got fired...

This was especially frustrating for initial testing inside computer parts -- the engineer sets everything up, it's running perfectly fine, and then he walks away and it shuts down. A machine correctly connects the LEDs to the mirror, and it won't boot up until the tester comes over and stands in front of it.

ENERGY OVER-SATURATION

Basically, if you use the mirrors too much, they become less reliable.

1. The magic mirrors rely on the usage of a twisted parallel universe where distance is hugely compressed - 1500 of our kilometers is equivalent to a nanometer in the parallel universe. Quite frankly, our instruments aren't sophisticated enough to detect the difference between the time required for transition.


2. Magic mirrors actually strip off about .0001% of the energy from transitioning things. Most of this energy is used to power the universe connection, but some additional quantity is radiated into the parallel universe.


3. Although the parallel universe can dissipate energy quite rapidly, it turns out that releasing too much energy too rapidly in an area with a radius of fewer than 5 nanometers can have strange results.


4. There is a threshold rate of energy bleedoff where the free energy in the parallel universe's overlapping section will build up and exceed the incoming energy pressure from the mirrors, leading to... interesting reactions. Transitions can be lost as they bounce out at the wrong angle to reality, highly exotic forms of super-high energy matter can materialize in our universe, or transmissions can be misrouted.

VISITORS

Spawn demons (not really demons)

1. This twisted parallel universe possesses numerous hyper-beings, creatures of such size that even with the differences in scale, they equate to a few meters in our universe. They are, by our standards, malicious


2. Every mirror transition bears a small risk of accidentally slicing off a small (in our universe) portion of one of these beings and dragging it into our universe. The slice in our universe would be unlikely to be larger than a pea at the time of transition.


3. 
   These slices, if not destroyed, can function as buds, gathering energy and resources until they can morph into a juvenile version of their spawning entity. Their methods of gathering energy and resources are going to be... unpleasant to residents of our universe.
   


4. The chance of this happening is astronomically low - we're talking 1 in a billion. You would never figure this out by basic experimentation.

Many answers highlight the potential for providing solar power- a mirror in orbit could shine light onto a solar panel, bypassing the light-scattering atmosphere and providing 24-7 sunlight. My answer also points out how the mirror can be used as a weapon that can shoot lasers, gamma rays, and x-rays.

If you want to limit these uses, which revolutionize alternative energy and war respectively, block all but visible light from passing through the mirror. That lowers the effectiveness of using mirrors for solar, because you cannot capture UV waves. Shining nonvisible light at the mirror will cause it to bounce off, reflecting whatever nasty waves you are shooting at it back at you.

You may be wondering how the mirror blocks lasers, which are concentrated light. The mirror absorbs a very small amount of light as it passes through and emits it as heat, like a normal piece of glass. When a laser shines on the mirror, the heat captured is much greater because of the laser's concentration. You end up burning a hole in the mirror, so only low-intensity lasers can be used.

Another answer suggested that mineature lasers could somehow be used in computers and fiber optics. Well, Pavel J. didn't notice that at random, some of the light shining through was refracted while entering and exiting the mirror, coming out at a different place on the mirror right next to where it should have been. Some light was absorbed by the mirror. Just a photon at a time, but in computers, where communication errors are a big deal, this will be a big problem. To combat transmission errors, computers will use increased parity. Make the error frequency high enough, as in several missing or moved photons per mirror per second, and the parity bits required are no longer worth the benefit of having almost zero infastructure.

Another benefit of these mirrors is their ability to pass through solid materials at the speed of light in a vacuum. However, if the light can't pass through opaque objects, and instead takes the path of least resistance like electricity does, it will be much slower. Going around the planet would be slower than going over it. Another consideration is that the light will pass through transparent materials if all other possible paths provide more total resistance, so local and faraway conditions like fog, buildings, and storms can all introduce a delay and degrade the signal, in the same way that WIFI is dampened by obstacles. This provides an explanation for why the photons are sometimes missing or moved (refraction from water droplets or vapor) and why some light is absorbed (but not emitted by the mirror in this case). That is definitely not something that a simple test in good weather at a short distance would pick up on.

Given all of these obstacles, the mirror would not be a life changing discovery, and while communication would be a major benefit, its uses would be severely limited.

For resolving the issue with thermodynamics, the magic mirror shouldn't be creating new photons, or changing their arrangement at all. The mirror simply receives photons here and outputs the same exact photons there. It's teleportation with no energy exchange at all, except for the photons themselves which leave just as they entered. (It's magic, after all).

Since their only function (from what I see above) is that they connect to another mirror by means of a unique name, I don't see any need for a limit on known languages. Whoever makes the mirror can specify a key-phrase and a name. When you want to connect to some other mirror, you say the key-phrase for this mirror verbatim, and then you say the name of the target mirror.

If the magic were a little more sciencey, (and I'm "bending" the rules here hehe), then a limitation could include that the means by which the magic mirrors transmit this light is by bending the causality-axis of the observable universe around a [pick your number > 5]th dimensional axes, so that it contacts itself immediately at the point of the two communicating mirrors. The issue here is negligible at first, but if you use very big mirrors, or thousands of them at once, then small gravitational and causal distortions begin to appear in high-mirror-traffic areas, affecting the speed of light in those locations. Now, bear in mind, mirror-traffic occurs along a string, if you will, which doesn't move straight in the 3rd dimension, but may affect the speed of causality in some mathematically predictable location relative to the mirror. Furthermore, the distortions don't necessarily have to happen at the same time as when all the mirrors are in use, and the distance in space/time between the heavy mirror-use and the distortion may vary based on the physical locations of the mirrors in question.

Since matter can't be passed through the mirror, but only light (and light-like stuff), magnetic forces may variably traverse the mirrors as well. This can be explained by means of a sort of filtering substance which is built into the mirror at design-time. The substance doesn't have to be a magical element, but could be a common element arranged in a very specific pattern so that it stops normal matter but allows waves to pass through it (like the way that the holes on the front of your microwave are just the right size to stop microwaves).

The energy required to perform this could actually be stored in the substances comprising the mirror, and could be such that it is only released over a very very long period of time. We are so used to getting tiny bits of energy out of gasoline that we tend to forget the unimaginable potential stored in every single atom around us. Suppose you vibrate one of those atoms in just the right way, by saying the magic words to it perhaps.... and the magic mirror all comes together.

So, what this looks like in practice is (in a very minor case), a bunch of people are using mirrors together, and then one of them is 10 minutes late to a meeting, another one feels like everything is very heavy (and everything is indeed a few pounds heavier) for a short time, and maybe another one loses his keys and finds them in a strange place. These kinds of small mishaps tend to happen inexplicably at first, granting the illusion that heavy use of these mirrors is bad luck in a sort of small way. Much later on, scientists measuring gravity and trying to understand the universe can begin to develop formulae around the specific behavior of the mirrors.

So then the recipe for the mirror has to include at least two parts in addition to the regular mirror stuff: a magical pattern impressed on some substance, for stopping normal matter but passing waves through it; and a substance which is picked apart by the forces of the universe for the duration of the mirror's life (maybe a few hundred thousand years if the mirror isn't broken).

I hope this helps!