Quantum tunnelling is what keeps the Sun burning

The Sun's core isn't hot enough to fuse hydrogen. It fuses anyway. Protons repel each other. Classically, they'd never get close enough for the strong force to take over — the core just isn't hot enough to force it. Classically, a proton-proton reaction requires kinetic energy above roughly 550 keV to clear the Coulomb barrier, far more than the core provides. Faced with this, Eddington famously remarked that if the centre of the Sun wasn't hot enough for the nuclear physicists, they should find a hotter place. Quantum mechanics resolved it: protons behave as waves, and there's a small probability of tunnelling straight through the barrier. The probability per pair is tiny, but there are so many protons that it's enough to keep the Sun shining for billions of years.

Quantum tunnelling is what keeps the Sun burning

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