Both the past and future particle horizons are infinite redshift surfaces. What does that mean in terms of retarded photons?
We never see a retarded photon emitted from the past particle horizon or behind it because it is infinitely redshifted to zero frequency when it reaches the origin of the past light cone of our detector. For the moment forget Hawking blackbody radiation. The past particle horizon is the future light cone of the Alpha Point of inflation.
Next emit a retarded photon into the sky. That photon will infinitely blue shift along the future light cone of the emitter at its intersection with the future event horizon that is the past light cone of our conformal end time Omega Point (infinite metric clock proper time).
Therefore, if, in past, I argued that our future horizon was a Wheeler-Feynman total absorber because zero frequency at it for a retarded signal - that is wrong - my greatest blunder. Not sure if I did, but I might have. In fact, our future horizon is the Wheeler-Feynman total absorber because any retarded photon hitting it will form an opaque electron-positron plasma that will absorb it with probability 1 - is the idea here. This is essentially Lenny Susskind's black hole complementarity argument that static LNIFs at horizons need infinite covariant accelerations and consequently infinite Unruh temperature prior to imposing Planck quantum gravity cutoff.
On Jul 25, 2010, at 3:01 PM, JACK SARFATTI wrote:
On Jul 25, 2010, at 11:53 AM, james f woodward wrote:
"Yes, Nick Herbert.  Recall that he pointed out that a photon approaching the event horizon will propagate through the horizon (as its local speed is still c and assuming that in the vicinity of the horizon spacetime is transparent)." 
I think Nick is mistaken. Kip Thorne has shown that the event horizon is an electrical membrane. We shoot a retarded photon into the sky. When it reaches our future event horizon it is infinitely blue-shifted exciting real electron-positron pairs out of vacuum of the horizon -getting totally absorbed. The horizon itself acts as a static LNIF detector with acceleration calculated in the following way.

The de Sitter "Newtonian" potential is  -c^2/ ^2

V/c^2 = - (area of concentric sphere inside our future horizon)/(area of our future horizon)

Newton's force per unit mass is
a = -dV/dr = +2c^2/

i.e. in Newtonian terms the repulsive anti-gravity field does work on the photon relative to static LNIF detectors.

We are at r = 0 in this observer-dependent dS metric representation

In Einsteinian terms

gtt = (1 + 2V/c^2) = 1 - 2 (area of concentric sphere inside our future horizon)/(area of our future horizon) ---> 0 at our future horizon

therefore the static LNIF representation metric is

Tunruh ~ a = 2c^2/ gtt^-1/2 = 2c^2/ (1 - 2 (area of concentric sphere inside our future horizon)/(area of our future horizon))^-1/2

I think this is the physical basis of Kip Thorne's membrane idea. It's also part of Lenny Susskind's black hole complementarity.
"And if it interacts with something beyond the horizon (as it must in the TI view as emission only occurs when the future absorption event is fixed), the advanced wave will propagate back through the horizon to the source -- unless the horizon is accelerating.  If the multiverse really is infinite so photons can, in principle, propagate infinitely far, then accelerating cosmic expansion is the only way to cut off interactions that produce advanced waves that return to the source from beyond the horizon. If total absorption within the event horizon is the case, then this cutoff issue is not a matter of concern.   But if total absorption is NOT the case, then it is."
On Jul 25, 2010, at 10:56 AM, james f woodward wrote:
"The paper you seek is (with loosely translated title): "A response to the argument directed by EPR against Bohr's interpretation of quantum phenomena," Comptes Rendus, vol. 236, pp. 1632 - 1634 (1953). As for predicting dark energy in the '50s (or, for that matter, the '60s, '70s, or '80s), the historical situation in observational and theoretical cosmology made that impossible for even very smart people like  Sciama to carry that off.  Had Hoyle not had such a commitment to steady state cosmology, he might have done it I guess.  By the mid '90s, any cosmologist with a real understanding of action at a distance field theory, and the cutoff issue idenified by NH a while back, should have been able to make the prediction."
On Jul 24, 2010, at 10:42 PM, james f woodward wrote:
"Olivier Costa de Beauregard's first paper on the application of W-F absorber theory to QM was published in 1953.  So was Sciama's first paper on Mach's principle -- which leads to an "action at a distance" view."
Seems like Sciama could have predicted dark energy back then. The de Sitter future event horizon as a hologram total absorber is a kind of ultra-strong Mach's principle it seems to me.