The hydrogen protons undergo quantum tunnelling in the the sun to fuse into helium, but are only able to do so as they are under immense heat and pressure and the protons and electrons get separated. But our digestive system also makes use of quantum tunnelling to quicken the digestive process, but how do the enzymes free up the electrons when our body temperature is so low?
Answer
The probability of quantum-mechanical tunneling through a barrier depends on the energy involved in the barrier. For two protons to fuse requires overcoming an energy barrier of many millions of electron-volts. By contrast, energy barriers to configuration changes in atoms and molecules are typically a few electron-volts or even a fraction of an electron-volt.
Quantum-mechanical tunneling can occur in enzymes at room temperature because the energy barriers are comparable to thermal energies at room temperature, a few milli-electron-volts.
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