Long Range Quantum Tunneling: Particles That Move Like X-Men

If you are familiar with the X-Men franchise, you are also familiar with Kitty Pryde, a mutant who can walk through walls and barriers with ease. Now researchers have provided a real-world example of a similar phenomenon actually occurring, if on a much-much smaller scale.

Quantum tunneling is a phenomenon best explained through example.

Say you threw a ball against a wall. Classic physics would say that the ball will bounce off the wall. However, according to quantum mechanics, there is actually a miniscule chance that this ball could essentially slip through the cracks of physical structure, winding up on the other side of the wall.

Researchers argue that this "tunneling" occurs in nature in very rare instances, but it is bound to happen. In the case of a ball or person, they are made of far too many particles, and the wall of far too many layers, for this ever to possibly occur in the whole of the universe's long-lived existence; however, the chance of it occurring is not zero.

This phenomenon is seen in the real world in things like radioactive decay, when protons and neutrons can tunnel out of the nucleolus of an atom. However, in this case, that is but one particle tunneling through one barrier.

Now, researchers from the Hanns-Christoph Nägerl Institute for Experimental Physics of the University of Innsbruck, Austria have observed a system of quantum particles tunnel through five potential barriers, succeeding where but one particle could not.

According to a study published in the journal Science, the researchers directed a gas of Cesium atoms - at temperatures just above absolute zero to ensure minimal kinetic energies - to pass through multiple tunneling layers.

In this experiment, the researchers had theorized that the atoms would lose energy as they tunneled, increasingly lowering the chances of quantum tunneling for each successful barrier pass. However, in a frictionless environment, where would this energy go?

The researcher found that an atoms' tunneling energy is somewhat recycled as a discreet resonance called a "Bose enhancement" that helps its compatriots along - not unlike miss Kitty Pryde dragging her fellow mutants along through some impassable object.

In all, the observed particles were able to pass through five barriers - showing that under very specific circumstances, multiple-participle long-range tunneling is very possible. Still, a person ever being able to willfully pull off this same stunt - regardless of their genetic makeup - remains pretty much fantasy.

The study was published in Science on June 13.