When Light Breaks Frame: Superluminality as Metaphor: Series Introduction

Every once in a while, physics seems to flout its own laws. Headlines trumpet “faster-than-light” phenomena, scientists check their instruments, and the public wonders if the cosmos has gone rogue. Yet beneath these momentary scandals lies a subtler story — one not about particles, pulses, or photons, but about the metaphors that structure our understanding.

This series investigates how physics construes the universe through the language of speed, signal, and limit. By examining “superluminal propagation” through a meta-critical lens, we reveal how apparent violations of light speed are never breaches of law, but exposures of the conceptual architecture sustaining it.

From the scandal of speed to the architecture of limit, from superluminal semantics to the final reflection on seeing the frame itself, this series traces a path from headline drama to relational insight: the cosmos is always more aligned than our metaphors permit.