You never actually touch anything—electromagnetic repulsion keeps atoms infinitesimally apart.

This phenomenon stems from quantum mechanics and the Pauli Exclusion Principle, formulated by physicist Wolfgang Pauli in 1925. Every atom has a dense nucleus surrounded by a cloud of electrons. Since electrons carry negative charges and like charges repel, the electron clouds of two atoms push away from each other before they can overlap.The distance between your fingertips and an object is incredibly small—typically measured in angstroms (one ten-billionth of a meter). Yet even at this microscopic scale, the electromagnetic force is powerful enough to prevent nuclei from touching. This repulsion is so strong it supports your entire body weight when you sit in a chair, essentially allowing you to hover a fraction of a millimeter above the seat.The sensation of touch is a neurological interpretation of this physical resistance. When electromagnetic fields interact, they trigger mechanoreceptors—sensory receptors in your skin. These receptors send electrical signals to the somatosensory cortex in your brain, which translates the pressure of repulsion into the feeling of texture, hardness, or warmth.What we perceive as solid contact is an illusion created by fundamental forces. Without electromagnetic repulsion, atoms would pass through one another, and solid matter as we know it would not exist. This concept remains central to modern physics and explains the structural integrity of everything in the universe.