Quantum mechanics, however, allows the alpha particle to escape via quantum tunneling. The quantum tunneling theory of alpha decay, independently developed by George Gamow and Ronald Wilfred Gurney and Edward Condon in 1928, was hailed as a very striking confirmation of quantum theory. Essentially, the alpha particle escapes from the nucleus not by acquiring enough energy to pass over the wall confining it, but by tunneling through the wall. Gurney and Condon made the following observation in their paper on it: