Abstract :
The recent paper of Lieu and Hillman (2003 Astrophys. J. Lett. 585 L77) suggesting that a possible (birefringence-like) phase difference ambiguity coming from Planck effects would alter stellar images of distant sources is questioned. Instead for division of wavefront interference and diffraction phenomena, initial (lateral) coherence is developed simply by propagation of rays (cf the van Cittert-Zernike theorem). This case is strongly immune to quantum gravity influences that could tend to reduce phase coherence. The phase ambiguity, if actually present, could reduce any underlying polarization of the light rays. However, we argue that, as expected since any inherent quantum discreteness of space should become increasingly negligible over larger distances, such a phase ambiguity is rapidly cancelled if a more realistic constantly fluctuating quantum ‘buffeting’ occurs.
