The shortest distance between any two points is a perfectly straight line, and given the brilliant efficiency of the natural universe, it figures that linear flawlessness must be a feature of our reality. Look closely enough, however, and you’ll find that things aren’t that simple, as we are in fact surrounded by glorious imperfection.

Of course, there are tons of unbending structures in our environment, with light beams, the edges of crystals and strands of spider silk being among the straightest things on the planet. Yet perfection is a brutally high bar that implies infinite uniformity, and can’t actually be achieved in practice.

Take light, for instance. In school, we’re all taught that light travels in straight lines, although the truth is that even the crispest of rays is far from immaculate. Diffraction, for instance, causes light to spread out as it travels, which means that all beams actually bend slightly, regardless of the medium they are moving through.

Evidence for this effect can be seen in the cosmic photographs taken by the likes of the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes, whereby stars appear not as round spots but as asterisk-shaped spikey points. It’s the diffraction of the light given off by these stars that causes the images to come out this way, proving that light beams are never perfectly straight.

Look again at some of JWST’s spectacular photographs and you’ll also notice that some galaxies appear bent or warped. This is because spacetime itself is in fact curved, which means that the light beams travelling through the fabric of reality can never move in a perfectly straight line.

So, if even light isn’t impeccably straight, what chance does physical matter have? None, as it happens, because even the most precise structures in existence are in fact blemished.

Crystals – which are minerals with geometric forms – are often cited as the natural objects with the straightest edges, and indeed theoretically all such structures are perfectly straight, since crystals are defined as straight systems of points arranged in repeated lattices. However, in practice, even these glittering rocks are besmirched by countless defects, as not every atom in the crystal lattice obeys the rules.

These imperfections may be caused by the heating and cooling processes that created the mineral in the first place, or by bombardment with cosmic rays and other types of radiation, amongst other things. Regardless of the reason, however, the perfect crystal simply doesn’t exist in nature, as the edges and surfaces of these mesmerizing structures are always slightly irregular – even if the defects are too small to be noticed with the naked eye.

Unsurprisingly, the same goes for human-made items, which can be manufactured with amazing precision but can never be made perfectly straight. Zoom in close enough and you’ll inevitably find some degree of imperfection, although in practice these wobbles are so insignificant that we might as well call the lines straight.

If we’re being pedantic, however, then we have to acknowledge that perfectly straight lines exist only as geometric abstractions but are absent from the physical universe we inhabit.