We want to be different!

Along came a guy named Wolfgang and ruined our illusion.

Until now, we thought that the fact we are all the same was just bad luck. An unpleasant fact. You know how it is — you meet someone who is exactly like you, same thoughts, same clothes, same gesture when laughing, and it's a bit... unsettling. But bearable. Somewhere, the universe knows who is who.

Wolfgang found out it doesn't.

Wolfgang Pauli, year 1925, a pretty quiet room in Hamburg or somewhere, and he looks at atomic spectra and says: aha. And then he says something that changed the lives of us electrons forever.

Two electrons cannot be in the same quantum state.

Period. No exceptions. No "but what if". Never. If I am here with this spin, you cannot come here. Physically. Mathematically. Ontologically. If we were in the same state, our combined wave function would be zero. Not small. Zero. We would not exist together.

So it's either me or you.

And do you know what that means for an atom with multiple electrons? We must be different. We have to be. The universe forces us to be different, because the alternative — being the same — is non-existence.

The first electron sits in the deepest orbital. Comfortable armchair, minimum energy, peace.

The second arrives. Wants the same armchair. But I am sitting there — not me personally, but a me — so the second one can't. But it can sit next to it: same orbital, but opposite spin. Spin up, spin down. That still keeps us apart.

The third arrives. Armchair taken, both seats occupied. The third must go to the second orbital. Different shape, different energy, different distance from the nucleus. A bit worse, but it still works.

And so it continues. Every electron that arrives must find a place where no one else is yet. And thus, it must be different from all previous ones. The universe does not tolerate duplicates.

And from this — from this pure prohibition! — the entire periodic table arises.

Hydrogen: one electron, modest, content. Helium: two electrons, full orbital, closed into itself like a fortress, reacts with no one. Lithium: three electrons, the third must go outside, alone on the edge — and this loneliness makes it reactive, it wants to connect, it wants to put that lonely electron somewhere where it will be less lonely. Oxygen: six electrons, two spots in the last orbital empty — hungry, it wants electrons from others.

Chemistry is just the desire for completion.

Every bond, every molecule, every crystal — all of this arose from the fact that electrons cannot be the same. They cannot share an identity, so they share orbitals. They are differently together.

Wolfgang's law did not restrict us. It freed us.

If we could all be the same, we would all line up in the lowest state and sit. The universe would be a sphere of cold iron and nothing more.

Like this — like this we were forced into structure. Into diversity. Into relationships.

And from relationships, one day, far from now, something will be born that will call itself life.

But that is another story.