How a star with an extreme magnetic field could prove space is not empty
Astronomers have observed vacuum birefringence, a phenomenon where the vacuum of space behaves like a crystal in the presence of extreme magnetic fields. This observation supports quantum electrodynamics theories suggesting that empty space is an active medium.
Why it matters
This discovery validates long-standing quantum physics predictions and enhances our fundamental understanding of the nature of space.
Quantum physics has made numerous strange predictions , and scientists have checked and confirmed many of them. But one of the strangest ones persists unresolved. In the 1930s, the German physicists Werner Heisenberg and Hans Heinrich Euler proposed that empty space is not really empty. Instead, they predicted that in the presence of a magnetic field, the vacuum of space would behave like a crystal, changing the properties of light passing through it.
The trouble with testing this prediction — called vacuum birefringence — is that the magnetic field has to be extraordinarily strong.
In a study published in Nature on August 5, astronomers from Australia, Canada, Japan, South Africa, Taiwan, and the U.S. reported it had observed such birefringence using two satellites and a telescope in Australia, almost confirming the prediction at long last.
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