I notice that the Wiki entry you linked on Gamow says that an expert’s attention is needed on that subject. (In other words, there are questions about that article.)
From what I remember when taking pchem, quantum tunneling is a random event and not very likely to occur. It also describes the movement of a particle through a physical barrier, not through a charge barrier.
Not even a neutron star or black hole would have the energy to overcome the Coulomb barrier of a large nucleus like Nickel, according to the physics blog. I don’t happen to know the blog off-hand; it was something that JohnnyB linked a while back. The large atoms are not made through fusion; they are made through another process that also happens inside stars, which involves shoving neutrons into the nucleus. Since neutrons have no charge, there is no Coulomb barrier to overcome. Since shoving neutrons into a nucleus is very likely to make unstable isotopes, those isotopes undergo various forms of radioactive decay, which ends up producing all of the elements that we know (with exception of the extremely unstable radioactive elements which have only been made in labs). That non-fusion process I just described does NOT describe what Rossi claims to be doing in his “eCat”. He is claiming to have achieved cold fusion... sure, he calls it “LENR”, but it’s cold fusion.
BTW, when you slip another proton into a hydrogen nucleus, you get helium, not deuterium. The nucleus of a hydrogen atom is a single proton. The nucleus of a deuterium atom is a proton and a neutron. Tritium consists of a proton and two neutrons. The identity of a chemical element is determined by the number of protons in the nucleus, and the isotope is determined by the number of neutrons.
Are there any other basic chemistry questions you would like answered?
Yeah, I think there's quite enough energy in a sufficiently large gravity well to overcome the coulomb barrier (which has to do with electrostatic fields, to wit, the Electroweak force).
I suggested taking an hydrogen molecule (two atoms made up, each, of 2 electrons and 2 protons). That's an example you see in most of the arguments developed to 'splain what goes on ~ having that extra electron and proton handy immediately next door reduces the complexity in the explanation ~ not that I understand all those arguments ~ some of them are probably the purest BS.
No big thing, sure, but your common tunnel diodes won't work without "tunneling". More importantly, tunneling won't happen with every particle (I believe electrons are, so far, the favorite). However, there are some fairly regular statistical probabilities applicable to how often this can happen ~ and that may also involve the probability of the occurrence of an electron of a higher than average strength.
At that point you get into the sort of math with which I am more familiar ~ and with which I have considerable experience. Let's say you have an electromechanical/vacuum operated postal processing machine and it runs maybe 50,000 pieces per hour past a device that measures reflectance characteristics (to see if it has a stamp for example, or a special number ~ which at high speed is just a blur and not a static number). The question is how long can that line run at that speed before a mail piece manages to achieve "letter mail satori in real time" by simply exploding?
Fluid dynamics really don't help you predict such things, but if you simply keep track of failures of that kind over time you can, in fact, develop standards that tell you if the current rate is normal or unusual.
What's going on really is a probabilistic event ~ and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the characteristics of the mail piece, but rather the electrostatic charge the line processes managed to build up on that particular piece, or the one before it, or after it ~ and "bang" the piece simply disintegrates as the hydrogen bonds in the lignan break.
Most mechanical engineers can do the math to predict the fail rate. What they can't do is feel the charge and walk over to the machine to watch a piece blow up.
I see an "aura" (which probably has to do with a flaw in my retina) and have been able to catch dozens of these events sufficiently in advance of the failure to walk over to watch it happen.
Anyway, they keep track of these things and adjust and manipulate the machinery over time to reduce their incidence.
It would be unimaginable to believe that the same effect doesn't occur at microscales.
I don't believe this happens when you use Tyvec, at least I've never seen a Tyvec envelope disintegrate. Paper is different.
I am confident the math developing the probability of various events happening in a Bose-Einsten condensate is IDENTICAL to the probability of electrostatic charge cascade events on a high speed mail processing line.