English

What is a Singularity in Geometrized Newtonian Gravitation?

Classical Physics 2013-08-09 v1 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology History and Philosophy of Physics

Abstract

I discuss singular spacetimes in the context of the geometrized formulation of Newtonian gravitation. I argue first that geodesic incompleteness is a natural criterion for when a model of geometrized Newtonian gravitation is singular, and then I show that singularities in this sense arise naturally in classical physics by stating and proving a classical version of the Raychaudhuri-Komar singularity theorem.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1308.1722,
  title  = {What is a Singularity in Geometrized Newtonian Gravitation?},
  author = {James Owen Weatherall},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1308.1722},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

16 pages. Contribution to a symposium entitled "New Horizons for Singularities in Classical Spacetime Theories" at the Philosophy of Science Association 2012 Biennial Conference