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[H. Tetrode:] The sun
would not radiate if it were alone
in space
and no other bodies could absorb its radiation. . . . If for example
I observed through my telescope yesterday evening that star . . .
100 light years away, then not only did I know that the light
which it allowed to reach my eye was emitted 100 years ago, but
also the star or individual atoms of it
knew already
100 years ago
that I, who then did not even exist, would view it yesterday
evening at such and such a time.
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p. 120
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James Gleick
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Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman
Vintage Books, 1993
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The quotation is from a paper written by German physicist H.
Tetrode published in Zeitschrift fur Physik 10 (1922): 317. It is
quoted in Wheeler and Feynman's 19 45 paper, "Interaction with the
Absorber as the Mechanism for Radiation," Reviews of Modern Physics
17:157.
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