At first thought, I would guess that the darkness inside light waves travelling faster than light would be an apparent effect if relativity and Lorentz covariance applies in all reference frames. I have no idea how darkness or nothingness can be set within a reference frame anywhere without mass, energy or substance.
Nothingness should be the same in all reference frames- of course one has the perennial Parmenides criterion of volume of being and nothingness to consider.
I think it possible that gravity is an emergent property of some force acting on quantum particles. Yet it could be that spacetime is warped by mass because something about nothingness travelling faster than light. TIme also need be considered in all of the scenarios as it is a transition from relationship A to B and there may be a delay in the propagation of force/energy allocation that creates the warping distribution of the allocation of mass/energy regarded as existing as space-time.
Groks comment on the above...
Grok- "The article you linked describes a fascinating recent experimental confirmation (published in Nature in early 2026) of a long-predicted phenomenon: optical vortices, or "dark points" (phase singularities) embedded inside light waves, where the electromagnetic field intensity drops to exactly zero due to destructive interference in the wave's twisted, corkscrew-like structure. These aren't literal "holes" carrying nothingness as a substance, but null points in the light field—places where the light waves perfectly cancel each other out, creating a tiny core of darkness amid the surrounding brightness.
Researchers (led by Ido Kaminer at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology) observed these vortices in a 2D material (hexagonal boron nitride) supporting slow-moving phonon polaritons—hybrid light-vibration waves that behave like light but propagate ~100 times slower, making the ultrafast dynamics easier to capture with high-resolution electron microscopy. As pairs of oppositely charged singularities approached each other, their paths in spacetime forced them to accelerate dramatically, with some trajectories appearing to exceed the speed of light in vacuum right before they annihilated. This matches 1970s theoretical predictions about wave vortices in general (not just light).
You're spot-on that this is an apparent effect fully compatible with special relativity and Lorentz covariance. Nothing with mass, energy, or information is actually traveling faster than c (the speed of light in vacuum). The "motion" of the dark point isn't a physical object or signal zipping through space—it's a geometric feature of how the overall wave pattern evolves over time. Think of it like a shadow sweeping across a wall faster than light (a classic analogy): the shadow's edge can outrun c because it's just the changing boundary of illuminated vs. dark regions, not any causal influence or energy transfer. The same holds for the scissors paradox (where the intersection point of closing blades can appear superluminal). Lorentz invariance is preserved because the underlying Maxwell's equations (or the wave equation here) are relativistic, and no reference frame sees a violation of causality.
On your point about "darkness or nothingness" in a reference frame: this isn't substantive "nothingness" with independent existence or a frame of its own. In quantum field theory, even the vacuum isn't empty (it has fluctuations), but classically here, the dark point is just a mathematical zero in the field amplitude at a given spacetime coordinate. You can define a reference frame where the vortex is at rest, or moving at any speed—including superluminal in appearance—without issue, because it's not a particle or wave packet carrying observable quantities. The field equations ensure consistency across inertial frames. Parmenides' distinction between "being" (what exists) and "nothingness" is philosophically evocative, but physics treats these singularities as emergent features of the being (the light field), not a separate ontological category. Nothingness isn't "set within" a frame like a substance; it's the absence defined relative to the surrounding wave.
Your speculation on gravity as an emergent property of quantum forces is a live area of research—ideas like entropic gravity (where gravity arises from information/entropy gradients at the quantum level) or induced gravity from quantum vacuum effects have been explored since the 1980s. However, this particular vortex phenomenon doesn't directly imply spacetime warping via FTL nothingness. The experiment happens in essentially flat spacetime (no strong gravity), and the FTL appearance is purely kinematic in the wave dynamics, not a source of curvature. General relativity already explains mass-energy curving spacetime via the Einstein field equations; any "delay in propagation" you mention is already baked into the light-cone structure of causality (forces and signals can't outrun c). Time as a "transition from A to B" aligns with relational views of spacetime (e.g., in some quantum gravity approaches), but the warping distribution of mass-energy is what defines the geometry—no extra FTL nothingness layer is needed or observed.
In short, the darkness-inside-light result beautifully illustrates how relativity allows certain patterns to seem superluminal without breaking the universe's rules. It doesn't challenge the speed limit for anything that could transmit information or influence events causally. Your broader thoughts on emergence, reference frames, and Parmenidean being/nothingness touch on deep foundational questions that physicists and philosophers still debate—e.g., whether gravity is truly fundamental or arises from deeper quantum relational structures. This experiment doesn't resolve those, but it does show how even "nothing" in a wave can reveal universal wave behaviors across physics (sound, fluids, superconductors, etc.). "