How foamy is spacetime?

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This image is a linear combination of two images first observed by Perlman et al. for research studying the relationship between this quasar and its galaxy. In the image the ring surrounds the nucleus of the galaxy making it look iris-like rather tha ...
This image is a linear combination of two images first observed by Perlman et al. for research studying the relationship between this quasar and its galaxy. In the image, the ring surrounds the nucleus of the galaxy, making it look iris-like rather than just pseudo-point-like. Image courtesy of Eric Perlman.

Maybe not as foamy as some scientists thought, as a fresh look at a quasar first observed in 1998 by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) shows. Physicists observed a diffraction pattern called an Airy ring around the image of a distant quasar-like object. This ring persuades physicists that the light from this distant object has traveled through a relatively calm – rather than extremely frothy – spacetime.


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