“Light, as I’m sure you know, is a membrane phenomenon on the surface of time”
Leviathan Falls James S. A. Corey
I don’t know what this means. For context, the side character explains it’s what allows the gate builders to act as a hive mind even though there is time delay in the speed of light.
Light, i.e. photons, travel at the maximum speed we know of in the universe.
Einstein’s e=mc2 shows us that when “the speed of light” is achieved travel forward or backward on the time line is possible.
Therefore a photon exists only for an instantaneous amount of time, regardless of how far it travels, from the perspective of the photon.
The light that the JWST captures from 12.3 billion years ago is that old to us. To the photon, however, it was created in that stellar object and then immediately crashed into the JWST sensor.
The membrane of time is what we perceive not what the photon experiences.
Edit: How does light actually work?