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mk · 4898 days ago · link · · parent · post: Astronomers find a 2 billion solar mass quasar, 770 million years after the Big Bang.
Not only do physicists need to reconsider evolutionary models of the universe, the Planck length may be now up for debate: http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-06-physics-einstein.html
In short, quantum graininess of space should cause polarization of light traveling great distances. Different wavelengths will experience the polarization to different degrees. A group has been examining data from a powerful gamma ray burst picked up by the ESA's Integral detector in 2004. Comparing polarization of low-energy and high energy rays, they have been able to limit quantum graininess to 10^-48m. The Plank scale calls it at 10^-35m. That is 10,000,000,000,000 times smaller. For all that we know, we still don't know why apples fall from trees. Btw, I have to admit that I take pleasure in another nail candidate for the string theory coffin.