Detectability of Planck-Scale-Induced Blurring with Gamma-Ray Bursts

Understand

Microscopic fluctuations inherent to the fuzziness of spacetime at the Planck scale might accumulate in wavefronts propagating a cosmological distance and lead to noticeable blurring in an image of a pointlike source.

• Distant quasars viewed in the optical and ultraviolet with Hubble Space Telescope (HST} may show this weakly, and if real suggests a stronger effect should be seen for Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) in X-rays and gamma-rays.
• Those telescopes, however, operate far from their diffraction limits.
• A description of how Planck-scale-induced blurring could be sensed at high energy, even with cosmic rays, while still agreeing with the HST results is discussed.