> It would also mean that quantum field theory in curved spacetime can only be consistent if baryon number fails to be conserved! This would be utterly shocking.

Is it really shocking (today)? I mean, isn't this a logical consequence of Hawking radiation for black holes? I thought we were shocked by this a long time ago, but now we're ok with it. The authors of the paper in question may very well be wrong in their calculations (I can't say), but this blog post doesn't smell good to me because of doubtful statements like these, passed off as so obviously true that you must be an idiot not to agree. That kind of emotional writing does not become someone whose profession should focus on scientific persuasion.

From Wikipedia [0], itself citing Daniel Harlow, a quantum gravity physicist at MIT:

> The conservation of baryon number is not consistent with the physics of black hole evaporation via Hawking radiation.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baryon_number

Theres still something in universe that we are missing and I feel the grand theories of next billion years are missing that

Is there a simple way to understand why massive objects don't radiate gravitationally? Accelerating observers see a bath of thermal radiation via something called the Unruh effect. If you're standing on a planet, you're accelerating under gravity, and therefore don't you see Unruh radiation? Does this have any connection to Hawking radiation?

lol, I wrote a very similar comment here a few days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43964524

It's true, that paper is nonsense. There's not really much else to say. Preprint servers sometimes publish the sort of stuff that wouldn't pass peer review. (Remember that S.Korean "superconductor" from about two years ago!?) The press should be cautious when writing about it.

Without a gravity well whose escape velocity exceeds c, how are they supposing hawking radiation happens in this scenario?

Both virtual particles-antiparticles survive (and promptly disappear because one didn't just cross an event horizon).