Since the inception of quantum mechanics in the 1920's, weird and counterintuitive predictions of this holistic theory of the quantum world have been discovered by scientists and these predictions have been confirmed experimentally. What then are these predictions ?
Non-determinism
Classical laws of physics, provided we have the right initial conditions can be used to predict almost accurately what the next condition(s) of a physical system would be - determinism, but in the quantum world, quantum mechanical laws, given also initial conditions is not enough to predict the next condition(s) of the physical system - non-determinism, observation is also needed. In the quantum world, probabilistic/statistical approaches are employed.
How and why the classical world (deterministic) arose from the quantum world (non-deterministic) is still a matter of philosophical debate.
Quantum superposition and Entanglement
Quantum mechanics predicts that quantum particles are always in superposition of states when no observation is made, it could be in a superposition of a wave and a particle (wave-particle duality), superposition of many momentums at the same time or many positions at the same time. Try imagining yourself in different places e.g England, South Africa, United States, e.t.c at the same time, well we all know it's not possible because we exist in the classical world - one place at a time, but quantum particles such as electrons, atoms, protons, e.t.c can experience this behaviour.
A consequence of this superposition of states is entanglement, from our imagination of yourself in multiple places at the same time, if I happened to interact with the you at England, then i'm also interacting with the you at all other places (south Africa, United States, e.t.c). What this also means is that if I have knowledge of what is going on in England through you, then I also have knowledge of what's going on in the other places you exist, without having to travel to those other places to find out (quantum teleportation). Well, if you observe closely it appears that the all of you's are connected but not physically, this unphysical connection is referred to as entanglement, Einstein once called it "spooky action at a distance", since it's observed in the quantum world, it's called quantum entanglement.
It is this principles that are employed in quantum computing and cryptography, in the case of quantum computers the superposition principle makes it more powerful than our current fastest classical computers - supercomputers. Classical computers would require many parallel processors/chips to perform multiple calculations at the same time, this consumes more space and power and still cannot perform all the calculations in existence, but ideally a single processor/chip of a quantum computer can perform all/multiple calculations in a single time, consuming lesser space and power.
Well, what we have just discussed are the artificial application of superposition and entanglement, from a natural perspective, quantum entanglement is partly responsible for the structure of atoms (electronic configurations) and also has a role in photosynthesis.
The above quantum mechanical effects/phenomena are the very popular ones but there are others less popular and very important, one of them is the main topic of concern in this article, in fact without this quantum phenomenon we would not have existed - from a cosmic perspective. What then is this mysterious quantum effect ?
Quantum tunneling
Consider a situation where by you hit a ball (giving it energy) and it moves in vacuum, during the course of it's motion it encounters an obstacle, say a wall of infinite height, the following possibilities might take place in the classical world.
Shatters the wall and moves to the other side of the wall, if it's energy is greater than that of the wall.
Gets absorbed by the wall.
Gets reflected by the wall.
Possibility 2 and 3 would happen if the energy of the ball is equal to or lesser than that of the wall. In our calculations, based on the deterministic nature of the classical world, we can tell if any of the three possibilities would take place, provided we have the right initial conditions. If possibility 1 would take place, then it's probability is one and that of possibility 2 and 3 would be zero, the same principle applies if any of the three possibilities takes place. However, in the quantum world, when the ball gets to the wall, calculation shows that there's always a nonzero probability of the ball existing at the other side of the wall (it can exist at the other side of the wall) even if it's energy is lower than that of the wall.
Anyone at present in this room has a finite chance of leaving it without opening the door -- or of course, without being thrown out the window.-- R. H. Fowler, after a lecture by George Gamow at the Royal Society
In the case of the energy of the ball being lower than that of the wall, it appears as if the ball passed through the wall like a ghost.
This doesn't happen at any distance, if the ball is already at the wall, then the thickness of the wall determines if the probability would be high or low, in fact the thickness of the wall can be thought of to be inversely proportional to the probability - if thickness increases, probability reduces, this ghostly passing through the wall effect is known as "quantum tunneling".
The wall in our simple scenario is called an energy barrier - it requires energy to be overcomed, the energy barrier need not be a wall, in fact an energy barrier is any physical condition containing energy and requires sufficient energy to be overcomed. We should note that quantum tunneling has been verified experimentally.
This quantum phenomenon has more very important artificial and natural applications compared to others, the most being application in the nuclear fusion process. Fusion - the coming together of lighter nuclear particles to form heavier nuclear particles with the release of large amounts of energy described by Einstein's famous equation E = mc^2, is the main working mechanism responsible for the existence of stars and planets. We all know our sun is a star and it's energy (solar energy) is the main source of energy on Earth, all other renewable energy sources on Earth except geothermal - energy originating from Earth's interior and tidal energy - energy originating from the moon's gravitational influence, gains energy from the sun. Without the sun, we all know plants cannot manufacture the food we eat and plants cannot gain carbon dioxide and water (mostly through rainfall) for their survival, which means all life forms on Earth would seize to exist if we had no sun.
This energy from the sun we are solely dependent on originates from nuclear fusion but without quantum tunneling nuclear fusion wouldn't take place.
Just after the big bang existed free fast moving charged elementary particles, (plasma state) which was characterized by the high temperature - millions/ billions of degrees, gravity then trapped these free moving particles at different positions in spacetime, because these particles are trapped but still free to move, they have the possibility of colliding with each other, which also includes the collision of like charges. Like charges however possesses electric forces/energy and we know like charges repel each other, if two like charges are to stick together they would need sufficient energy to overcome the repulsive energy (energy barrier), but it has been discovered that the energy possessed by these free moving charges isn't enough to overcome the energy barrier and is because according to the Coulomb's law, the barrier energy approaches infinity as distance between the particles gets smaller, it is here quantum tunneling becomes handy especially at distances very close to each other (the charged particles). The tunneling effect is not enough to maintain the attachment, this where the strong nuclear force (strongest force in the universe) comes in and large amounts of energy is released in the form of radiations ( birth of stars), planets are believed to have come from stars through another kind of process.
Here on Earth from a technological perspective, nuclear fusion is a promising source of energy needed for the production of electricity and powering space shuttles, this is because it is very clean - zero carbon emission, and it is very efficient, if not the most efficient but currently we are still facing some other challenges in making it a reality.
If however these other challenges are overcomed and nuclear fusion power becomes a reality here on Earth, don't forget to thank quantum tunneling 😉.
For further reading
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