Dead Stars Don’t Radiate

Archiving and meta-discussion

• Some question linking via archive.is when the blog has no paywall; others argue archiving protects against link rot, traffic spikes, geo-blocking, and preserves the article’s state during discussion.
• Several note HN had an early, technically sound comment debunking the original “universe decays in 10⁷⁸ years” result that was initially downvoted, used as evidence that audiences prefer sensational “breakthroughs” over skeptics.

Knowledge silos, expertise, and accessibility

• One view: the episode shows damaging knowledge silos and failures of adjacent-field communication.
• Counterview: relevant knowledge (timelike Killing fields, QFT in curved spacetime) is standard and on arXiv; the scientific process did work—other physicists quickly published a rebuttal.
• A recurring theme is that cutting-edge QFT/GR is accessible only to a tiny fraction of people; explanations pitched too technically for HN are hard to evaluate, yet oversimplification breeds misunderstandings.

Hawking radiation, Unruh effect, and the criticized claim

• Multiple comments stress that the popular “virtual particle pair, one falls in” story is a heuristic; the real Hawking effect comes from mode-mixing of quantum fields in curved spacetime near horizons.
• Unruh effect (accelerated observers seeing thermal radiation) is raised as an intuitive bridge, with clarifications about proper acceleration and different types of horizons.
• Baez’s core point, echoed by others: for static, globally hyperbolic spacetimes with a global timelike Killing field (like an isolated “dead” star), standard results say no Hawking radiation; claiming otherwise is extraordinary and should have triggered expert consultation.

Baryon number and theoretical stakes

• Some argue Baez overstates how “shocking” baryon-number violation would be, citing existing expectations that black hole evaporation can violate baryon number.
• Others reply: the paper under fire implies baryon violation for ordinary collapsed stars (without black holes), which is qualitatively more extreme.
• Experimental limits on proton decay and nonperturbative SM processes are mentioned to show that baryon violation is tightly constrained and context-dependent.

Black holes, horizons, and information

• Long subthread debates whether infalling observers “really” cross the horizon versus asymptotically approach it, the role of coordinate choices, and how to reconcile outside vs infalling viewpoints.
• Standard GR picture (using Kruskal–Szekeres, Eddington–Finkelstein) is defended: locally, nothing special at the horizon for large black holes; tidal forces and the singularity are the real killers.
• Others propose more speculative ideas (horizons as dimensional reduction surfaces, maybe no interior/singularity at all), which are met with skepticism and requests for consistency with mainstream GR/QFT.

Journalism, peer review, and misinformation

• Many see the real institutional failure not in “academia in general” but specifically in the journal (Phys. Rev. Lett.) publishing a paper outside reviewers’ expertise.
• Several argue science journalists should have emailed multiple experts before amplifying such an outlier claim; others caution that “ask the experts” must be framed as context-seeking, not blind deference.
• Broader concern: science now visibly suffers from hype cycles and misreporting; to non-experts, genuine disputes and corrections can look like politics, undermining trust.

Title and communication style

• Physicists and astronomers note the blog title “Dead Stars Don’t Radiate” is technically misleading: white dwarfs and neutron stars certainly radiate thermally; the intended meaning is “no Hawking-like radiation from non–black holes.”
• Some call this mild clickbait; others see it as deliberate provocation aimed at a technically literate audience, redeemed by the detailed, well-argued content.