The Nature of Light (from Cosmos Today 9-28-92:5.6)

5.6 THE OSTENSIBLE IMAGE OF THE UNIVERSE
What astronomers see with their telescopes, as with their unaided eyes, is an ostensible image, meaning that it is a picture of what appears to be viewed. The image is actually subject to alteration by the optical treatments of the rays that produce the image. This subject matter will be introduced with the following aside: Among quantum physicists a growing number are relishing ["relinquishing"? (ed.)] the role of the observer in the phyics observed. So here is a rule they'll like. It is that there are no unintercepted lightlines extending indeterminately into empty space. That possibility in the quantum principle continued to pique Einstein, who objected that the universe could not be emitting itself into infinity. In the isodynamical model, every lightline is a conjunction of points locating particles of matter. The observer's particle is peripheral to a distant particle that he perceives as luminous. The conjunction is a line of T-force (tee-bar) directed as a force vector from the peripheral point toward the ostensible point as into a force sink. For astronomers, that rule completely eliminates the idea of old light and new. In short, no one intercepts light that has been speeding through space from a previous epoch or instant. The rectilinear conjunction of the observer with points observed is instant.