On Wed, Aug 14, 2013 at 5:11 AM, Alain Sepeda <[email protected]>wrote:
Accelerated chemistry in the reaction between the hydroxyl radical and > methanol at interstellar temperatures facilitated by tunnelling > Robin J. Shannon, Mark A. Blitz, Andrew Goddard & Dwayne E. Heard > http://www.nature.com/nchem/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nchem.1692.html > It seems that the "tunneling" in this instance refers to a chemical rather than a nuclear reaction. The "barrier" in this case would be for the chemical reaction. If this is true, this paper is probably talking about something more mundane than what we're interested in. The usual assumptions about the tunneling of protons and tritium may be of little help if they start from a plasma under equilibrium conditions. Even if we know something about this case, those assumptions may not apply to other circumstances; we don't know enough to say for sure, and we have good reason to suspect otherwise. It seems to me that such assumptions are questionable within a solid, for example. Eric
