A tiny magnet levitates in a magnetic trap, like a weightless needle. Its magnetized axis is like a stubborn compass needle that is prevented from turning. An invisible wall rises before it. But in the quantum world, particles can seep through barriers — this trick is called tunneling. The main enemy of this ghostly permeability is residual gas: even in the emptiest chamber, molecules swarm, and their collisions extinguish the quantum state, breeding disorder, entropy.
Schrödinger established that quantum objects live in many states at once, until the environment takes a peek. The researchers built on the ideas of Wojciech Zurek about how the environment destroys this multiplicity. They calculated that for a nearly spherical magnet, tunneling through the rotational barrier would withstand gas bombardment. Such an experiment will capture the moment when the spinning magnet suddenly finds itself flipped the other way, without having crossed the wall. This will open the door to ultra-sensitive sensors and new types of quantum computer cells.
Quantum tunneling through a barrier is routine for microparticles. But for a magnetized sphere that suddenly flips the other way without intersecting the wall — it's like watching a ball pass through a brick.