How an alpha particle escapes from the nucleus of an atom

This is an incredible ‘everyday’ example of ‘weird science’ at work. The particles that fly out of radioactive material don’t have sufficient energy to do so. It’s exactly like a brick suddenly deciding to fly off into space – escaping the earth’s gravity. But because they are individual particles and their position in time and space is not absolute, they can exercise their ‘right’ to be elsewhere – or choose one of the other ‘non-zero probabilities’. It’s worth saying that the reason it doesn’t happen much to bricks is because every particle in the brick would have to simultaneously collapse into the same probability – not impossible – just very unlikely. The process has the lovely name 'Quantum Tunneling'. It’s also worth saying that the particles that escape, are EXACTLY the same as those that don’t – it’s nothing to do with the particle.