D. Semenov

When a young star ejects jets of gas, they slam into the surrounding cloud like a fist into a pillow. At the impact site, the gas is compressed and heated — creating a shock wave. In this hot zone, atoms and simple molecules collide and assemble into larger compounds, known as complex organic molecules.

In a carbon atom's nucleus, particles occupy their own 'apartments'—like residents who cannot share the same room. Physicists call this rule the Pauli exclusion principle: two identical inhabitants of a nucleus cannot be in the same state. But what if the rule is sometimes broken?