CH5+ has five hydrogen atoms scrambling around a carbon atom that sits at the center.

The ultimate goal of this work is to identify a kind of signature for CH5+. Once we have it, we can compare it to what is observed from astronomical measurements to determine its abundance in different regions of space.

It turns out that this was the crucial step.

Although the hydrogen atoms are constantly scrambling, the overall range of types of structures can be characterized by three basic configurations.

We are operating in a manner that we unfortunately must do, under the circumstances.

We are on or above targets we set.