Mathematician Wins $3M Prize for 'Magic Wand Theorem'

[mokus]

Maybe I’m overly annoyable right now but I was unable to find, in the first 20 or so paragraphs of fluff, a statement of what the theorem actually is, and barely a hint of even what field it’s in. Is there a better write up anywhere that actually talks about the math rather than trying to spin it into a soap opera?

Edit: found an explanatory paper on the theorem that appears more technical but still accessible with the right background: https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.05654

[yummypaint]

Numberphile to the rescue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhj5er1k6GQ&app=desktop

[samasblack]

Another great explanatory paper written for a broad audience is http://www-personal.umich.edu/~alexmw/BilliardsToModuli.pdf

[paulpauper]

really fascinating stuff. thanks for sharing / the article does not do justice at all to the concept., read the pdf and google it instead.

[OisinMoran]

I wonder if the bit about it only working for rational angles would be better phrased as it not being proven for these angles yet? It seems strange that it would not work for one of these if you can get arbitrarily close to it on either side and have that work.

Then again there all a lot of strange things in mathematics and my only knowledge of this problem is from this article.

[notfashion]

That's fair to say. Rational angles happen to make things easy and result in a problem which has connections with lots of well-developed areas of mathematics.

This paper https://www.math.brown.edu/~res/Papers/intel.pdf is mentioned in one of the Numberphile videos on the topic and it basically says this in the introduction.

[anonytrary]

But you also realize the dark point is arbitrarily small? It's an exact point. You can get arbitrarily close to an exact point without ever reaching it.

[learnstats2]

I also found this strange, but I think the example is much harder to understand than the article claims.

By my current interpretation:

If the light shines in all directions, then a regular polygon, or in fact any convex polygon, doesn't need the mirrors to illuminate the room - the candle will light the room without needing a bounce. So, if you're thinking of a convex polygon, it's not quite relevant to this example.

The only difficult case would be if there was a concave polygon and the light had to bounce into the "caves" (or perhaps a series of rooms).

It's possible to imagine that there are specific set-ups where, if the mirrors are set up just right, the light will be bounced back out of a cave rather than filling it up.

If such a situation exists, then that bounce back would happen only with a very precise set-up: being arbitrarily close to the set-up wouldn't result in the bounce back.

[curiousgal]

Of course, knowing that the theorem proves that a room of mirrors is fully lit by a candle is totally worth $3M. /s

Seriously though, the article glances over the applications of such a theorem that make it so useful.

[andrewcchen]

I'd love to know what makes this theorem so useful, but I doubt I will understand much considering this is in an area of math I know almost nothing about.

I imagine it must be very hard to explain the theorem while making it accessible and interesting to the general public.

[paulpauper]

why wouldn't it be lit. the photons diffuse everywhere

[idlerig]

I couldn't help but be reminded of the opening scene in the Brenden Frasier classic The Mummy.

"Aziz! Light!~"

[jonas_kgomo]

This over-simplification of the theorem made me think of the theory of Light Field History. In the 15th Century, Leornado Da Vinci noted "The air is full of an infinite number of radiant pyramids". Later Michael Faraday gave his “Thoughts on Ray Vibrations”, His ideas were intended to do away with the ether in favor of lines connecting the particles; light being the vibrations of these lines or rays.Today we know it "light field' as consisting of the total of all light rays in 3D space, flowing through every point and in every direction.

[crawfordcomeaux]

So how can I design a building without doors with unilluminated spaces? What would it be like in such a space? How can we use this to design spaces where darkness is easily preserved in set spaces without adding materials? This sounds like a lovely concept for designing a temple of some kind. Or whatever building might have rooms set aside for practicing things in darkness, like playing with one's vision or learning to do chores in the dark.

[kevinwang]

Is this related to visibility problems in computational geometry (like the art gallery problem) or am I being misled by the candle example?

[layoutIfNeeded]

Yes, it’s the art gallery problem, but the walls are mirrors.

[enjoyyourlife]

The paper was published in 2013

[daenz]

Someone smart in math, does this have implications in elliptic curve crypto? From what little I know about EC key generation, it seems related.

[cyphar]

I highly doubt it. Elliptic curve multiplication does involve "mirroring" the point around the curve, but it has nothing to do with real mirrors or specular reflections.

[b_tterc_p]

> Now place a candle in the middle of the room, one that shines light in every direction. As the light bounces around the different corners, will it always illuminate the whole room? Or will it miss some spots? A side effect of proving the magic wand theorem, Eskin said, is that it conclusively answers this old question.

This is a point light in the middle of a regular polygon right? Why is this noteworthy? Is it that the light settles on all points evenly? Is it in spite of some sort of phase cancellation thing?

[Someone]

To help people understand why this theorem is surprising, first rephrase it from “the candle lights the entire room (bar a finite number of points)” to “the candle can be seen from any position in the room (bar a finite number of positions)”

Next, don’t think of “room”; that puts your mind too much towards simple, almost convex structures. Instead, think of the a floor of a building where all doors are removed.

For example, take the ground floor plan of the Pentagon, with its myriad of rooms and corridors, with all doors removed, and replace all walls by perfect mirrors. Is there a spot to place a candle so that it or it’s reflection, reflection of a reflection, etc. can be seen from all locations in the pentagon, bar a finite number? The theorem says there is.

Now, feel free to make it harder: add back the doors, but don’t completely close them, keeping a rational angle with the walls the door opening is in. Feel free to make the angles as small as you like.

Next, place room dividers wherever you want, as long as they are perfect mirrors, form rational angles with the walls, and don’t completely close of some room or corridor in the Pentagon.

Do you think you’ll be able to completely shield of at least one room, wherever that candle is placed? If so, you’re mistaken.

[ironSkillet]

The only constraint on the polygon is that the angles are rational multiples. There all kinds of crazy non-convex shapes that satisfy this constraint, which is why the result is noteworthy.

[RcouF1uZ4gsC]

>Imagine a room made out of perfect mirrors, Eskin said. It doesn't have to be a rectangle; any weird polygon will do. (Just make sure the angles of the different walls can be expressed as ratios of whole numbers. For example, 95 degrees or two-thirds of a degree would work, but pi degrees would not.)

My impression was that it did not have to be a regular polygon.

[aidenn0]

It's trivially true for a convex polygon, but non-obvious for many concave polygons.