For a sphere w/ a mirrored inside surface--what's the reflection of an object hovering at the sphere's center?

Question

Suppost you have a sphere. The inside surface of the sphere is a perfect mirror. What does the reflection on the mirror look like if an object -- say a book or a teddy bear or a pineapple -- is hovering inside the sphere at its exact center?

Is the entire mirrored interior surface of the sphere covered with a reflection? Is every point on the mirrored interior surface of the sphere reflecting a point on the surface of the object in the center?

Will there even be a reflection? There's no light source in the sphere, so do we have to assume a light source in the sphere someplace? How does that change the reflection (some points of the inner surface of the sphere will be in shadow if the light source is inside the sphere)?

Can the light source be external, e.g. a the sphere is a two-way mirror?

Answer 1

Let's assume it's Teddy and, what the heck, Teddy has eyes that see and he has an "inner glow" that produces light, and, uh, Teddy is very small compared to the diameter of the sphere.

OK, so Teddy looks out and sees: a uniform brownish blur which would correspond to the average of all the light frequencies of his fur, eyes, claws, etc.--on the side of his body in the direction his eyes are looking. Since Teddy is at the focus of the reflection, all the points of light would "ray trace" back to him and he'd see a fairly uniform blur.

Your other options would slightly modify the view.

Answer 2

In order for the inside of an *ideal* two-way spherical mirror to be the reflective side, light from outside wouldn't be able to go into the sphere. Although someone standing outside of the sphere would be able to see in (assuming that there is a light source inside the sphere). Real two-way mirrors are a bit different from ideal ones, but let's just drop this two way mirror idea.

Let's assume that the object inside of the sphere is small compared to the size of the sphere and let us further assume that the object is emitting light. (This isn't such a bad assumption if we consider the infra-red part of the spectrum.) In such a case, the light reflects off of the mirror and returns to the center of the sphere. Thus the image is projected onto the object. In other words the object and its image are coinciding. The answer given above, involving the bear, is an accurate account of what an observer inside of the sphere would see.

Answer 3

you may see aspects of your self from diverse angles one thousand circumstances over. once you're the purely project interior the field then everywhere you look the image may be meditated, once, two times, one hundred circumstances till the path of sunshine got here to you. The exception is in case your student replaced into on the precise centre of the field, then each thing may be black because each thing of the reflect will reflect lower back a twin of your student. (easily you may in all likelihood see interior your eye because the student is amazingly sparkling).

Answer 4

That was a good answer by EXPO -

Interesting that that is what we see when we look at the general background radiation from the big bang. Pretty much a uniform field at around 4 deg K with slight variations.

INTERESTING

Answer 5

nothing there isnt a light source as you stated. if it is a two way mirror who knows

Answer 6

Thats a damn good quetion. Too good for my small and weak brain. lol. Kudo's!!!