Physics questions with little to no actual story

Question

A few examples like:

• Quantum entanglement

• The solar system doesn't have its own unique physics

• Destroying a black hole

With all of these questions I can see how it could be useful to use within a story, however there is no context of that story. No "I want the black hole to be destroyed so I can..." just the question of how physics works. Whilst these are often unsuitable for physics SE I feel that without the context of a story we are drifting away from that world building aspect of the site in these questions.

I'm not saying we shouldn't be asked or respond with physics-based answers, but there may be a way to shoe-horn the idea into the scenario the writer desires using plot and some hand-waving. If we don't know what the end goal is we can't say "Well, you can't destroy a black-hole but a work-around which achieves your end goal is..". Instead, if we're sticking to the physics of our universe, quite often the reasonable answers end up being summed up by "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid you can't do that."

I feel like these are unsatisfactory answers if the OP is a writer.

Should we be encouraging questions to include a little context of their story?

Answer 1

Yes we should be encouraging questions like these, because they can be about elements of worldbuilding whether this is for a fictional story, TV or film script, or game. Questioners don't need to explain the context of their worldbuilding element.

If someone wants to write a novel where a black hole is destroyed, then they could seek out plausible techniques or methods for accomplishing BH destruction. Sometimes questioners will, frankly, blather about their story's background. Mostly that is quite unnecessary to answer the question proper. Sometimes it can be entertaining, sometimes less so, but it isn't necessary.

Worldbuilding SE focuses on specific questions about worldbuilding itself. So if that's about destroying black holes, then that's all that needs to be asked. The very specificity of typical questions will tend to exclude all that story material.

It's as simple as that.

Answer 2

Encourage the story feedback but don't discourage the question, unless it is just blatantly a pure science question. Even a sliver of hypothetical suffices for WB.