system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why we can record sight and sound but not smell?
gpt
Sight (light) and sound are energy in different forms. You can convert energy between forms and therefore record and reproduce it.

Smells are particulates in the air. You'd have to somehow convert molecules to an energy pattern, and then to "play back" the scent convert the pattern back to matter.

We can analyze components of scents and come up with a similar chemical composition that mimics it, but that's as close as we're going to get without fundamental leaps forward in physics.