Imaging nuclei by smashing them at high energies: how are their shapes revealed after destruction?

High-energy nuclear collisions has recently emerged as a powerful "imaging-by-smashing" tool to reveal the global shapes of atomic nuclei. Here, I provide a conceptual framework for this technique, explaining how nuclear shapes are encoded during quark-gluon plasma formation and evolution, and how they can be decoded from final-state particle distributions. I highlight the method's potential to advance our understanding of both nuclear structure and quark-gluon plasma physics.