BURNING MIRRORS | Excerpt from Convergence Newsletter Weekly

BURNING MIRRORS REFLECT SALVATION
by William Thomas

wall painting, Florence, Italy

When the face in the mirror is the sun, prepare for a barbecue.

Reading like a Marvel comic, the Chiliades chronicles what happened when the Roman fleet anchored within bow-and-arrow range of invading the pesky Sicilians around 2,300 years ago. Instead of ducking projectiles, the puzzled Roman commander Marcellus watched as a geriatric Superhero named Archimedes fiddled with some mirrors atop a bluff outside Syracuse.

"The old man constructed a kind of hexagonal mirror, and at an interval proportionate to the size of the mirror he set similar small mirrors… moved by links and by a form of hinge,” explains the old text.

Another 12th century action text, the Epitome Ton Istorion picks up the story, relating how “At last in an incredible manner” Archimedes “burned up the whole Roman fleet. For by tilting a kind of mirror toward the sun he concentrated the sun's beam upon it; and…kindled a great flame, the whole of which he directed upon the ships that lay at anchor in the path of the fire, until he consumed them all.”

Just as the old genius’ invention sent salvation to Sicilians, contemporary spin-offs from this ancient “death ray” technology promise similar succor from the invasive perils of global warming.

HOT WATER

To trace the development of today’s nine-square kilometer solar power collectors, let’s hop ahead to 200 BC. A century after the Roman fleet was roasted in the Med, a “geometer” named Diocles living in Greece just after 200 BC looked into Archimedes’ “burning mirrors” and saw some serious juice. After making some calculations, the mathematician updated Archimede’s invention with a more geometric section of a reflective cone revolving about its axis.

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