"Black holes can only get bigger" - huh?

[Sunil]

I am guessing that what Peter means is that in these the rules suggest that only "published speculations" should be discussed? not becase they are necessarily right but because it at least prevents random personal and pedestrian speculations from degrading forum quality.

I take care about my posts not degrading a particular thread, especially if mods are involved. Peter has not given a reference to his speculation, and in such situations I conclude this is fine in this context.

 

[PeterDonis]

I am guessing that what Peter means is that in these the rules suggest that only "published speculations" should be discussed?

And even that only in the Beyond the Standard Model forum. Which this isn't.

Granted, any quantum discussion of black holes is kind of borderline here, since we don't have an established theory of quantum gravity. But for purposes of this thread, we are discussing the closest thing to a "standard" model of black hole evaporation, the model originally proposed by Hawking. It's good to be aware that there are issues that have been raised with this model and that there are other proposed models, but if we really want to get into a detailed discussion of those issues we probably need to start a separate thread in the BTSM forum.

not becase they are necessarily right but because it at least prevents random personal and pedestrian speculations from degrading forum quality.

Maintaining the signal to noise ratio of PF is one reason, yes. There are at least two others: first, PF is not a platform for conducting original research, and personal speculations/theories that aren't in the published literature are original research; and second, the published literature at least provides a common basis for discussion.