LMR-078 · Quantum
Tunneling
Particles walk through walls. That's why the Sun shines.
§ A first look
§ Depths
Six ways into the same idea — from bedtime story to chalkboard. No order required.
L1 · Crayon
Told like a bedtime story.
For a curious 10-year-old. No jargon. Just a picture in your head.
Roll a marble up a hill. If you didn't push it hard enough to reach the top, it rolls back down. Obviously. It cannot just appear on the other side; that would be cheating. Now shrink down to the world of the very smallest things, where the rules get strange. A tiny particle facing a hill it doesn't have enough push to climb can sometimes — just sometimes — show up on the other side anyway, without ever going over the top. That trick is called tunneling, and it is genuinely the cheat code that makes the Sun shine. It's also how your phone's flash memory works. So: every selfie you've ever taken is built on particles teleporting through walls. Bit much, honestly.
§ Strange but true
- 01Quantum particles routinely pass through walls they don't have the energy to climb.
- 02The Sun shines because of this. At its core temperature, protons shouldn't fuse — but tunneling lets them, billions per second.
- 03Your USB drive stores data with tunneling. The whole flash-memory industry runs on a quantum cheat code.
§ From the field journal
Tunneling
"Particles walk through walls. That's why the Sun shines."
— observed, sketched, not yet fully understood.
§ Nearby