The Poincaré homology sphere

This illusion (from the Chicago museum of illusions, and duplicated, I believe, in other similar museums in other cities) “almost” appears to give a tiling of \(\mathbf{R}^3\) by regular dodecahedra, which for a number of reasons is not possible. (It also looks remarkably like knot not.) Moving one’s point of view slightly, one can observe that the interior faces don’t quite match up. But can this be remedied with curved mirrors? That is, is there a way to shape these mirrors so that one can is looking inside the Poincaré dodecahedral space?

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One Response to The Poincaré homology sphere

  1. Danny Calegari says:

    Yes, but you also need to fill the space between the viewer and the mirror with glass (or a transparent liquid) whose specific gravity varies in a precise way. Ian Agol used to have a thing on his UIC webpage about “hyperbolic glass”, but I can’t seem to find it, not even with the wayback machine …

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