2006/10/13 by Eric Steinbring · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Cosmology #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Hubble space telescope #Hubble's law #Observational cosmology #Planck #Plane (geometry) #Quasar #Redshift #astro-ph #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/510199
published as Astrophys.J.655:714-717,2007 · 8 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in the ApJ
arxiv created 2006/10/13 · openalex publication_date 2007/01/23 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
It has been suggested that the fuzzy nature of spacetime at the Planck scale may cause light waves to lose phase coherence, and if severe enough this could blur images of distant pointlike sources sufficiently that they do not form an Airy pattern at the focal plane of a telescope. Blurring this dramatic has already been observationally ruled out by images from Hubble Space Telescope ( HST ), but I show that the underlying phenomenon could still be stronger than previously considered. It is harder to detect, which may explain why it has gone unseen. A systematic search is made in archival HST images of among the quasars with the highest known redshifts . Planck-scale-induced blurring may be evident, but this could be confused with partially resolved sources.