An event that does not fit into the accepted laws of physics could be considered magic. If a ball continues to bounce, a ghost appears or communicates, someone levitates, a prediction comes true, or something appears or disappears — we are looking at events the current model has no room for.

After Newton there is Einstein, though so much of what we have done with his work amounts to little more than building bombs and finding more efficient ways to boil water.

Thinking outside the box is, simply, not thinking inside the box. How do I get from one place to the other efficiently and sustainably? None of the fuel-driven trains, trucks, ships, jets, or cars meet both qualities. Electric cars and trucks seem to be suspect as well.

We can define the box, for we humans are great at thinking inside it. Space requires time for one to travel from one place to the other. “Beam me up, Scotty.” To answer the question of how, it might be helpful to define the space that exists between one place and another.

Einstein coined the term spacetime. Time exists between one place and another; it takes time to cross that space. The language we use shapes the theories we are able to hold, and the theories then shape what we are willing to call possible.

In order to have a theory of physics, the mind must be open. Time, space, light, particles, the void — all exist, though perhaps not quite as we define them. Our perception of time is that it exists as past, present, and future; even these three aspects, as we perceive them, are subject to perception.

Space is perceived universally as distance between objects. Objects are perceived as dense groupings of particles with dimensional form. Light is perceived as either waves or particles — often photons are called wavicles because they behave in ways that can be measured as either.

In reality, photons could be perceived in an infinite number of ways. Waves and particles are merely the ways humans measure things. We have instruments to detect and study aspects of our universe, and those instruments often determine how we model, or theorize, the elements of the universe. The map is not the territory; the measurement is not the thing.

Whatever sits beyond that map — whatever the instruments do not yet reach — is what we are willing, for now, to call magic.