Scientists seeking to explain high-temperature superconductivity have been violating the Pauli exclusion principle, a team of researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Rutgers University report. Any theory that does not embrace the Pauli principle has a lot of explaining to do, they say.
The basic organizing precept behind the periodic table is the Pauli principle, which says that electrons with the same spin cannot occupy the same energy state. The Pauli principle leads to the shell structure of atoms, and is inviolate for electronic systems. Many researchers, however, have been breaking this important rule when proposing theories to explain the mechanism behind high-temperature superconductivity.