Related papers: A Primer on Spacetime Singularities I: Mathematica…
Penrose's singularity theorem implies that if a trapped region forms in a gravitational collapse, then a singularity must form as well within such region. However, it is widely expected that singularities should be generically avoided by…
I argue that spacetime singularities entail no ontological commitment to material entities. First, I show that Penrose's singularity theorem is best understood as a theorem of incompleteness, it demonstrates the failure of specific…
On the occasion of Sir Roger Penrose's 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics, we review the singularity theorems of General Relativity, as well as their recent extension to Lorentzian metrics of low regularity. The latter is motivated by the quest to…
Spacetime singularities in general relativity are commonly thought to be problematic, in that they signal a breakdown in the theory. We address the question of how to interpret this breakdown, restricting our attention to classical…
Spacetime singularities have been discovered which are physically much weaker than those predicted by the classical singularity theorems. Geodesics evolve through them and they only display infinities in the derivatives of their curvature…
The aim of this article is to promote the use of probabilistic methods in the study of problems in mathematical general relativity. Two new and simple singularity theorems, whose features are different from the classical singularity…
In this contribution, we study spacetimes of cosmological interest, without making any symmetry assumptions. We prove a rigid Hawking singularity theorem for positive cosmological constant, which sharpens known results. In particular, it…
The definitions of classical and quantum singularities in general relativity are reviewed. The occurence of quantum mechanical singularities in certain spherically symmetric and cylindrically symmetric (including infinite line…
An overview is provided of the singularity theorems in cosmological contexts at a level suitable for advanced graduate students. The necessary background from tensor and causal geometry to understand the theorems is supplied, the…
The occurrence of singularities where spacetime curvature becomes infinite and geodesic evolution breaks down are inevitable events in classical general relativity (GR) unless one chooses an exotic matter violating weak energy condition.…
Singularities in general relativity such as the big bang and big crunch, and exotic singularities such as the big rip are the boundaries of the classical spacetimes. These events are marked by a divergence in the curvature invariants and…
We report on some advances made in the problem of singularities in general relativity. First is introduced the singular semi-Riemannian geometry for metrics which can change their signature (in particular be degenerate). The standard…
The classical singularity theorems of R. Penrose and S. Hawking from the 1960s show that, given a pointwise energy condition (and some causality as well as initial assumptions), spacetimes cannot be geodesically complete. Despite their…
We consider spacetime metrics with a given (but quite generic) dependence on a dimensionful parameter such that in the 0 and infinity limits of that parameter the metric becomes singular. We study the isometry groups of the original…
The celebrated geodesic congruence equation of Raychaudhuri, together with the resulting singularity theorems of Penrose and Hawking that it enabled, yield a highly general set of conditions under which a spacetime (or, more generically, a…
We briefly review some results concerning the problem of classical singularities in general relativity, obtained with the help of the theory of differential spaces. In this theory one studies a given space in terms of functional algebras…
A formalism and its numerical implementation is presented which allows to calculate quantities determining the spacetime structure in the large directly. This is achieved by conformal techniques by which future null infinity ($\Scri{}^+$)…
We present here a brief review and discussion on recent developments in the theory of spacetime singularities. After mentioning some key motivations on the main ideas and concepts involved, we take the approach that the singularities will…
It is widely believed that classical gravity breaks down and quantum gravity is needed to deal with a singularity. We show that there is a class of spacetime curvature singularities which can be resolved with metric and matter field…
Although there is general agreement that a removal of classical gravitational singularities is not only a crucial conceptual test of any approach to quantum gravity but also a prerequisite for any fundamental theory, the precise criteria…