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Comment by Georgehoot | Hacker News Reader

I have noticed that many theoretical physics stories that are upvoted to the front page, have no comments for much longer than other stories, and fewer comments overall. I wonder if this is because people simply don't know about the subject matter enough to create discussion, possibly fear of being wrong, or uninterest in the discussion.

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Even as a non-physics-major, stories like this tend to be terribly lacking in meat. The article says almost nothing about the topic: only a general description, without any technical information or exactly what the theorized effect on Hawking radiation is.

As a hacker, a story that says "scientist invents/discovers new thing" is completely uninteresting to me unless it actually makes an effort to explain the new thing. If it does little more than state the discovery/invention, it's news, not science, and can't teach me anything.

This isn't my field at all, and to be honest I have a very shaky understanding of what's communicated in the article. I find it extremely interesting, though my lack of knowledge leaves me with little to say.

Most of the time when I read the comments of physics articles like this, it's to find criticism that I myself have no chance in hell of producing.

I think it's more of a lack of interest. I myself find these stories very interesting, but I'm a physics student instead of an engineering/comp-sci student.

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