At least some of the reading I have done on that subject (some fairly bizarre topics like "Project Rainbow") suggest that many of our conventional theories have been twisted beyond recognition.
1.3.2 Theory Overview
Tunneling is the quantum mechanical process by which a particle can penetrate a classically forbidden region of space (for example, passing from two separate points A and B without passing through intermediate points). The phenomenon is so named because the particle, in traveling from A to B, creates a sort of tunnel for itself, bypassing the usual route. In 1927 the possibility of the phenomenon of tunneling, called barrier penetration, in a calculation of the splitting of the ground state in a double-well potential was identified. The phenomenon arises, for example, in the inversion transitions of the ammonia molecule, which is allowed in quantum mechanics for classically forbidden. Later, the Schrödinger equation was applied to the calculation of the reflection coefficient of an electron from various kinds of interfaces and noted that an electron, whose energy was insufficient to go over the barrier classically, could still tunnel through the barrier for the case of a rectangular potential barrier. This extended the case of tunneling between bound states noticed earlier to the case of tunneling between continuum states.
George Gamow and, independently, R. W. Gurney and E.U. Condon applied the tunneling phenomenon to explain the range of alpha decay rates of radioactive nuclei. Although tunneling may seem abstract and far removed from reality, it is a actually a basic and important processes of Nature. It is vital, for example, in the very first step of the thermonuclear reaction which powers the Sun. The expansion (big-bang) theory of the universe even proposes that the universe began at a state of no geometry (i.e., a universe with nothing, not even time) and then a tunneling occurred, allowing the Universe to pass from the state of nothing to something (the false vacuum) by tunneling.
Some interesting reading can be found in this link.
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