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he earliest antecedents of the mirror date back to none other than 6,000 BC in Anatolia; that is to say, mirrors have accompanied us practically since the beginning of our civilization. Their uses and composition have varied according to the era and place, but it soon became clear that mirrors not only reflect what is in front of them, but also allow us to see much further than our limited vision allows.
Science and the military quickly learned to take advantage of this ability to direct light, and therefore, energy. In fact, legend has it that Archimedes used concave mirrors to reflect solar rays and thus burn the sails of Roman ships attempting to invade Syracuse... Nor would ocean voyages have been possible without the mirrors of sextants that allowed us to determine our latitude at sea (and even later in space!) nor to carry out most astronomical discoveries.
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We tend to think that mirrors are a faithful reflection of reality, but, despite using them almost continuously throughout the day, we forget that they are subject to technical conditions that will determine the reflected image. Reality varies depending on where you look, you know. This is what the first part of the exhibition reminds us of, where, playing with our senses and awakening our curiosity with combinations of mirrors, more than one will get the impression of being in a deforming and psychedelic world. In addition to being fun, all these experiences also awaken in the visitor a deeper reflection on our importance as observers and on the infinite possibilities that the mirror opens up in the scientific field.
But it is when we go to the other side of the mirror, in the second part of the exhibition, that we can see the fantastic possibilities that mirrors offer for research, both in astronomy and in other fields of physics. Because reflecting on mirrors is above all reflecting on light and its properties: how it is produced, how it is transmitted, and how we can take advantage of this source of unlimited knowledge and energy. Mirrors allow us to nothing less than tame light, and one of the great successes of "Mirrors" is to present practical cases easily understandable to the visitor.
The exhibition also presents an extraordinary piece: a mirror from the European Virgo project interferometer, originally located in Pisa, an apparatus of such precision that it is capable of detecting the slightest interference and which allowed, in 2015, to observe for the first time the gravitational waves described by Albert Einstein (those famous wrinkles in spacetime). According to Elisa Durán, it is "a discovery that opened a new avenue of research in the exploration of the cosmos."
Finally, in these times of social media prevalence, the exhibition has the success of ending with a nod to the image we reflect through a fun game of mirrors, which thus returns us to our most immediate environment.
Text: Raúl M. Torres Photography: Laia Sabaté
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