Back in 1930, Werner Heisenberg and Hans Heinrich Euler predicted the existence of a weird phenomenon known as “vacuum birefringence,” wherein a strong magnetic field can affect the polarization of light. Now, this 80-year-old prediction of quantum electrodynamics (QED) — the theory that describes, among other things, the interaction between matter and light — has finally been observed in nature. Using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, a team of researchers were able to observe a nearby neutron star — ultra-dense corpses of massive stars —affecting the polarization of light passing through the “empty” space around it.
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Matter is spontaneously appearing and then disappearing around this distant star
