Scientific Colloquium
October 9, 2009
Y. JACK NG
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA
"A
Cosmic Peek at Spacetime Foam"
Due to quantum fluctuations,
spacetime, probed at small scales, is very complicated -- something
akin in complexity to a turbulent froth which the late John Wheeler
dubbed quantum foam, a.k.a. spacetime foam. Our recent work suggests
that we can detect spacetime foam with extragalactic sources once the
Very Large Telescope Interferometers are fully operational and that
dark energy is arguably a cosmological manifestation of spacetime foam.
Some of the physics/astrophysics of spacetime foam will be discussed.