The Speed of Dark

As the first post of a new blog I want to take a moment to introduce myself and explain the origin of the name "The Speed of Dark".
First the name.
The other night I was talking about physics with a new friend of mine. specifically we were talking about wave-particle duality, the theory of light and electron waves. This alone is interesting since he has no education in physics, and therefore a very limited understanding of those topics, but he was interested in what I was studying in school. I was talking about light, when he asked me; "what is darkness then?"
Science says that darkness is just the absence of light. Philosophers, of course, have other ideas. Everyone has different ideas. As we talked about what darkness was scientifically, he asked me, "since there is a speed of light, is there was a speed of dark?"
I told him I didn't think there was, at least not in the sense of there being a physical constant of it. (If there was I think it would be -2.99x10^8 m/s, or the negative of the speed of light.)
But the thought just stuck with me. What is darkness? Is it just the absence of light? It's amazing the way simple questions stay with you, especially when you don't know the answer.

I'm a scientist. I majored in physics with a minor in psychology. It's the physics part that usually shocks people though. Sometimes they get a stunned look on their face. Some have choked on food that they're eating. Most just ask "why?"
The reason is I love physics. It's stupidly hard, but you can actually see it working. The fact that your computer is not floating in the air is physics. The fact that we don't spontaneously combust is physics (and a little chemistry, but that's just applied physics). Every step we take, everything we do, and every sport we play is directly impacted by physics. The simple idea that the Earth doesn't spiral off into the sun is physics.
You get the point.
Physics is a beautiful thing. I know most people don't see it that way, but I do. Even at it's hardest there are amazing things to learn about the universe. From the reason that black holes are bright when you look at pictures of galaxies, to the existence of the smallest particles, there is an intricate beauty in the way our world is formed. From the force of friction, to the speed of light we discover the meaning of time, and space.
To some the thought of tracing everything back to the equations that make up the universe demeans the value or the beauty of the world. To me the world becomes an even more amazing place because of the complexity that we haven't even began to understand.
To quote the great and well loved scientist, Bill Nye the Science Guy:
"Science rules!"