Quantum tunnelling

The 2025 physics prize is about quantum mechanics. What is it? Quantum mechanics is the field that scientists use to describe the small world, at the level of atoms and particles.

At this level, different physical laws apply. A special science, quantum mechanics, is needed to explain how everything is connected.

One of the strange effects of quantum mechanics is tunnelling. This means that barriers that should actually be impossible to pass through may still sometimes be traversed.

The 2025 Nobel Prize laureates in physics was awarded for experiments showing that some very strange things that happen in the world of particles also can happen in our part of reality, more specifically in an electrical circuit. An electrical circuit is something that can carry electric current, for example a battery, a pair of wires, and a bicycle light. Tunnelling allows current to flow even if there is an obstacle in the circuit.

If you find quantum mechanics difficult to understand, it’s no wonder. The 1922 Nobel Prize laureate in physics, Niels Bohr, said this in 1952 in a conversation with two other Nobel Prize laureates: “Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum mechanics cannot possibly have understood it.”

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