Stellar Horizons: Quantum Tunneling

Margarita is your Student Ambassador in Greece, leading a series of articles about Aerospace Engineering as part of her leadership project.

…Sarah’s story continued…

Sarah didn’t fall; she slipped. One moment, she hovered above Saturn’s glowing hexagon, its perfect geometry etched in her mind. Next, the light folded inward, as if space itself had inhaled.

The particles tightened around her, not swirling anymore; they were vibrating.

“Something’s changing,” Sarah whispered. The blue particle flickered rapidly. “You are approaching a boundary”.

“A boundary? Between what?” she asked.

The largest particle pulsed, slower than the rest. “Between when you are…and where you are not supposed to be”.

Ahead of her, something impossible appeared. A wall. Not solid. Not transparent. Just there, a shimmering divide, like heat rising off glass, stretching endlessly in every direction. Sarah reached out instinctively, but stopped just short.

“I can’t go in there”, she said.

“You shouldn’t be able to”, the yellow particle replied.

“But…you might”, the purple particle whispered.

The particles dimmed, as if the universe itself was lowering its voice.

“It’s called quantum tunnelling.”

The space around her shifted. Suddenly, Sarah wasn’t large anymore. The vastness of Saturn vanished. The rings, the storms, the aurora, all dissolved into something smaller. Much smaller.

“That’s an atom…” she breathed.

“Not just one,” the blue particle said. “You’re inside a world where certainty doesn’t exist the way you know it.”

“If I were a particle…” Sarah said slowly, “I wouldn’t have enough energy to cross this.”

“Correct,” said the largest particle.

“Then I’d bounce back.”

“Usually.”

Sarah looked closer. Something strange was happening. Tiny flickers were appearing on the other side of the barrier. Not crossing it. Not breaking through.

“They didn’t go over,” the yellow particle said gently.

“They didn’t go around,” added the blue.

“They went through,” finished the largest.

Sarah shook her head. “That’s impossible, there is no way!”

A single particle approached the barrier. It slowed… hesitated… Then faded. For a moment, it was nowhere. Then, it appeared on the other side. Whole. Untouched. As if the barrier had never existed. Sarah gasped.

“It tunneled,” the blue particle said.

“But it didn’t break anything!” she said. “It didn’t push through!”

“Because it didn’t need to,” the largest particle replied.

The space around her rippled again, like reality reconsidering itself.

“In the quantum world,” it continued, “particles are not just points. They are possibilities.”

Sarah looked back at the barrier. For a moment, they flickered, just like the particles had.

“Could I…?” she whispered.

None of them answered. But they didn’t need to. Sarah turned toward the barrier. She stepped forward.

The moment her hand touched the surface, it didn’t feel solid. It felt uncertain. Like static. And then she went through, scared, curious, not believing. Sarah opened her eyes.

Behind her, the barrier shimmered quietly, unchanged. In front of her, a new expanse unfolded, stranger, deeper, more uncertain than anything before. She exhaled slowly.

“That…” she said, voice trembling, “shouldn’t have been possible.”

The largest particle drifted beside her, glowing softly.

“And yet,” it whispered,

“It happens all the time.” 

This article was written with the assistance of GenAI tools.