After several decades of speculation in 1957, Leo Esaki demonstrated that electrons could "tunnel" through a barrier that would block such motion according to classical concepts of a "potential barrier". A 2019 study using the Binary Mechanics Lab Simulator showed that most of the energy content of a "perfect vacuum" volume was quanta called 1-states. Thus, the electron tunnel effect could occur with transfer of a single fractional charge quanta across a barrier without transfer of an entire electron particle.
Fig. 1 illustrates the electron tunnelling mechanism as a transfer of a single energy quanta called a 1-state across a barrier that electron particles would not cross according to classical notions. In this simplified diagram, an electron is shown on the left and none at the right side of a barrior at time t = 0. At a later time (t > 0), the electron at the left has dropped below the particle detection threshold and a detectable electron has formed to the right of the barrier.
The barrier in Fig. 1 may be created with a variety of materials and methods. At the microscopic level of fineness in binary mechanics, the barrier is simply another configuration of 1-state and 0-state locations. Thus, whatever its composition, the barrier itself would be expected to exhibit 1-state exchanges with the volumes at its left or right.
Discussion
The 1957 Esaki result [1] appeared to demonstrate that an electron particle moved across a barrier. The present analysis may not exclude this possibility, but its probability would be many orders of magnitude less than single 1-states moving into or out of a barrier on both sides. Some of these 1-state displacements may decrease electron count on the left side of the barrier and increase that count on the right.
A 2019 study of vacuum composition [2] showed that the vast majority of energy in a "perfect vacuum" volume consists of 1-states at locations called "spots" below threshold for detectable nucleons. This report supported popular notions of a "sea of virtual particles" and provided an additional methodology to study vacuum.
An additional Simulator study [3] cooled a volume of material initially at approximate "standard temperature and pressure" to zero Kelvin. This procedure produced a description of eight elementary particles at "ground state" revealing that each consisted of three 1-states. For the electron in Fig. 1, each 1-state represents a -1/3 fractional charge. This information contributed to the present analysis of the electron tunnelling effect.
Let us examine the statement that a particular electron crosses the barrier. First, the exact same set of three 1-states in the electron on the left of the barrier at t = 0 would have to move across the barrier and reassemble on the right side at some time t > 0. But these 1-states could not move together according to the system state equations 1-6 of binary mechanics [4]. Specifically, these 1-states would exit an electron spot in three different directions. Second, the odds that these particular three 1-states move to one electron spot to the right of the barrier are close to nil. In short, although an electron might "tunnel" through a barrier, this event almost never occurs.
The foregoing analysis leaves the most likely and logical description of the tunnelling mechanism as a result of 1-state fractional charge displacements.
References
[1] Esaki, L. (22 March 1974). "Long Journey into Tunneling". Science. 183 (4130): 1149–1155.
[2] Keene, J. J. "Vacuum composition" JBinMech December, 2019.
[3] Keene, J. J. "Zero Kelvin particle composition" JBinMech February, 2019.
[4] Keene, J. J. "Binary mechanics postulates" JBinMech November, 2020.
© 2026 James J Keene
