"Chemistry is a highly improbable science," says Graduate Student Mike Deskevich, who adds "It's good for life on Earth that things are so unreactive." For instance, if chemical reactions happened easily and often, oxygen in the air would cause clothing and other flammable materials to burst into flame. In addition to making life difficult, high probability chemistry would render theoretical chemical physics much less interesting. As it is, theorists spend months determining the particular molecular shapes, vibrations, and energy states that make the simplest chemical reactions possible.