<story><title>Mathematicians Disprove Conjecture Made to Save Black Holes</title><url>https://www.quantamagazine.org/mathematicians-disprove-conjecture-made-to-save-black-holes-20180517/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>habitue</author><text>Ok, yes, &lt;i&gt;this&lt;/i&gt; is how you promote scientific research to a lay audience:&lt;p&gt;1) They don&amp;#x27;t bury the lede. The first paragraph says what the result is immediately, if you understand it already, you&amp;#x27;re done reading.&lt;p&gt;2) Inverted pyramid structure. After they explain what happened, they break apart the historical context &lt;i&gt;of the problem itself&lt;/i&gt; and give copious examples and metaphors to give the gist of what the problem is about and why it matters that it was solved.&lt;p&gt;I can&amp;#x27;t tell you how many of these popsci articles start out with &amp;quot;When Mary was a 3 year old, she used to look up at the stars and ... blah blah ... Now, she&amp;#x27;s taking on the scientific establishment and daring to do the unthinkable...&amp;quot; etc etc. I just dread skimming through the fluff to try to pick out what the hell was actually done.&lt;p&gt;Thank you Kevin Hartnett (the author of this piece) for not attempting to turn scientific papers into a human interest story.</text></comment>
<story><title>Mathematicians Disprove Conjecture Made to Save Black Holes</title><url>https://www.quantamagazine.org/mathematicians-disprove-conjecture-made-to-save-black-holes-20180517/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>bencollier49</author><text>So spacetime exists beyond the Cauchy horizon, but it&amp;#x27;s discontinuous?&lt;p&gt;What on earth would discontinuous spacetime involve? It sounds like a sort of shattered chaos of torn-up bits of space.</text></comment>