What actually happens when you approach a gravitational singularity?

Roger Penrose's 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics recognises that his identification of the concepts of "gravitational singularity" and an "incomplete, inextendible, null geodesic" is physically very important. The existence of an incomplete, inextendible, null geodesic doesn'...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2021-09
Main Authors: Scott, Susan M, Whale, Ben E
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Curvature
Physicists
Singularities
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Roger Penrose's 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics recognises that his identification of the concepts of "gravitational singularity" and an "incomplete, inextendible, null geodesic" is physically very important. The existence of an incomplete, inextendible, null geodesic doesn't say much, however, if anything, about curvature divergence, nor is it a helpful definition for performing actual calculations. Physicists have long sought for a coordinate independent method of defining where a singularity is located, given an incomplete, inextendible, null geodesic, that also allows for standard analytic techniques to be implemented. In this essay we present a solution to this issue. It is now possible to give a concrete relationship between an incomplete, inextendible, null geodesic and a gravitational singularity, and to study any possible curvature divergence using standard techniques.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.2109.04061