Water Observed Tunneling
Dihydrogen Oxide, the leading compound for human drowning deaths, just revealed a new property - an ability to quantum tunnel. At the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, researchers found that water squished into a confined pocket of beryl exhibited delocalization - basically becoming present in six different, symmetric locations simultaneously. The discovery was a first for a molecule of its size to essentially "break through" its bounding walls. According to Alexander Kolesnikov, "this means that the oxygen and hydrogen atoms of the water molecule are 'delocalized' and therefore simultaneously present in all six symmetrically equivalent positions in the channel at the same time .... It's one of those phenomena that only occur in quantum mechanics and has no parallel in our everyday experience."