Re:Antiproton Orbiting Helium Ion
by marcosdumay on Wednesday March 16, 2022 @02:36PM
(#30702368)
It reaches the nucleus by a process of tunneling. You can never completely stop it, but it reacts exponentially to you increasing a barrier.
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An excited state isn't a barrier, it's a state with a higher energy than ground state. Several non-ground-state orbitals have a wavefunction whose amplitude drops to zero toward the centre.
An electron won't tunnel to a location where its wavefunction amplitude is zero.