Hubble Pictures Too Crisp, Challenging Theories of Time and Space

 Clarity is what astronomers and the public have come to expect
 from the Hubble Space Telescope. But the sharpness with which 
 Hubble photographs distant galaxies has scientists pondering 
 why the pictures are not blurry, as some new calculations 
 suggest they should be, and whether some basic assumptions 
 about space, time and gravity might have to be rethought.

 The photographs, of very distant stars and galaxies, were 
 analyzed to test a fundamental aspect of quantum theory, which
 is a collection of widely held ideas about physics at the 
 invisible level of atoms, and how these ideas relate to 
 conceptions of physics on the grandest scales of the universe. 

 Put simple, Hubble ought to see a pixilation effect when 
 photographing distant objects.

 It does not. Hubble pictures are crisp and clear, no matter 
 the distance to the object.

 And that, say two separate teams of researchers, might mean
 there are flaws in quantum theory.

 The newest study was led by Roberto Ragazzoni of the
 Astrophysical Observatory of Arcetri, Italy and the Max Planck
 Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany. Ragazzoni's 
 team studied Hubble pictures of a galaxy more than 5 billion
 light-years away and, separately, an exploding star 42 million
 light-years distant.

 Similar results came a few weeks ago from scientists using a 
 slightly different technique at the University of Alabama in
 Huntsville. Richard Lieu and Lloyd Hillman used separate
 Hubble images and a more complex analyzing technique to 
 examine galaxies that are at least 4 billion light-years away.

 They did not find the expected quantum effect, either.

 By Robert Roy Britt
 Senior Science Writer
 posted: 07:30 am ET
 02 April 2003
 http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/quantum_bits_030402.html

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