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In all the episodes of the original "Star Trek" series, not once did Captain Kirk actually use the words: "Beam me up, Scotty!" It might be interesting to examine not only why he never said this, but also why he never could have said it.

Although it is not completely obvious, when we examine something, we really are interpreting the pattern of reflected photons from the object as they fall on the retina of each eye. The process is incredibly complicated so much so, in fact, that computer scientists have not yet learned how to program even a supercomputer to simulate this with any accuracy or fidelity.

Take a wall, for example. Photons from the sun, which is our light source, reflect "bounce" off the wall and fall on our retinas, so that we perceive an image of the wall. If we mentally substitute tennis balls for photons, we can build a mental picture of what is happening. A tennis serving gun that shoots balls at the wall will be our "light" source. By appropriately aiming the gun and observing which balls bounce back and which don't, and also by observing the pattern of the returning balls, we can quite accurately measure the size, distance, and even other gross characteristics of the wall.

Picture a raised pattern on the wall face consisting of components smaller than the tennis balls. By observing the ball dispersal pattern, we can deduce that there is some kind of raised pattern on the wall, but will be unable to determine any of its details.

This analogy is not perfect, because photons act in strange ways, depending on how they are being used and interpreted. Sometimes they act as waves instead of particles, and this confuses things, but for this discussion we will keep just to the particle character of photons.

If we substitute something smaller for the tennis balls marble-sized balls, for example then we can reexamine the wall, deducing its finer details. It may also become necessary to fire the balls with more energy in order to get them to bounce back with appropriate information. As the smaller balls hit the raised pattern elements on the wall, how they bounce back will give us much more detailed information about this pattern than we could surmise from the larger tennis balls. Continuing the analogy, as the detail we wish to examine gets smaller, we use ever smaller, more energetic balls to conduct the examination. Eventually, the balls we fire at the wall begin to damage the very structure we are attempting to examine, as the BBs chip away at the plaster

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