The weak and the strong cosmic censorship hypotheses are two mathematical conjectures about the structure of gravitational singularities arising in general relativity.
General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity, and as Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics. General relativity generalizes special relativity and refines Newton's law of universal gravitation, providing a unified description of gravity as a geometric property of space and time or four-dimensional spacetime. In particular, the curvature of spacetime is directly related to the energy and momentum of whatever matter and radiation are present. The relation is specified by the Einstein field equations, a system of second-order partial differential equations.
A wormhole is a hypothetical structure connecting disparate points in spacetime, and is based on a special solution of the Einstein field equations.
A gravitational singularity, spacetime singularity or simply singularity is a condition in which gravity is predicted to be so intense that spacetime itself would break down catastrophically. As such, a singularity is by definition no longer part of the regular spacetime and cannot be determined by "where" or "when". Gravitational singularities exist at a junction between general relativity and quantum mechanics; therefore, the properties of the singularity cannot be described without an established theory of quantum gravity. Trying to find a complete and precise definition of singularities in the theory of general relativity, the current best theory of gravity, remains a difficult problem. A singularity in general relativity can be defined by the scalar invariant curvature becoming infinite or, better, by a geodesic being incomplete.
In Einstein's theory of general relativity, the Schwarzschild metric is an exact solution to the Einstein field equations that describes the gravitational field outside a spherical mass, on the assumption that the electric charge of the mass, angular momentum of the mass, and universal cosmological constant are all zero. The solution is a useful approximation for describing slowly rotating astronomical objects such as many stars and planets, including Earth and the Sun. It was found by Karl Schwarzschild in 1916.
In general relativity, Eddington–Finkelstein coordinates are a pair of coordinate systems for a Schwarzschild geometry which are adapted to radial null geodesics. Null geodesics are the worldlines of photons; radial ones are those that are moving directly towards or away from the central mass. They are named for Arthur Stanley Eddington and David Finkelstein. Although they appear to have inspired the idea, neither ever wrote down these coordinates or the metric in these coordinates. Roger Penrose seems to have been the first to write down the null form but credits it to the above paper by Finkelstein, and, in his Adams Prize essay later that year, to Eddington and Finkelstein. Most influentially, Misner, Thorne and Wheeler, in their book Gravitation, refer to the null coordinates by that name.
The Penrose–Hawking singularity theorems are a set of results in general relativity that attempt to answer the question of when gravitation produces singularities. The Penrose singularity theorem is a theorem in semi-Riemannian geometry and its general relativistic interpretation predicts a gravitational singularity in black hole formation. The Hawking singularity theorem is based on the Penrose theorem and it is interpreted as a gravitational singularity in the Big Bang situation. Penrose was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2020 "for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity", which he shared with Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez.
The Kerr metric or Kerr geometry describes the geometry of empty spacetime around a rotating uncharged axially symmetric black hole with a quasispherical event horizon. The Kerr metric is an exact solution of the Einstein field equations of general relativity; these equations are highly non-linear, which makes exact solutions very difficult to find.
In theoretical physics, a Penrose diagram is a two-dimensional diagram capturing the causal relations between different points in spacetime through a conformal treatment of infinity. It is an extension of the Minkowski diagram of special relativity where the vertical dimension represents time, and the horizontal dimension represents a space dimension. Using this design, all light rays take a 45° path . Locally, the metric on a Penrose diagram is conformally equivalent to the metric of the spacetime depicted. The conformal factor is chosen such that the entire infinite spacetime is transformed into a Penrose diagram of finite size, with infinity on the boundary of the diagram. For spherically symmetric spacetimes, every point in the Penrose diagram corresponds to a 2-dimensional sphere .
In theoretical physics, quantum field theory in curved spacetime (QFTCS) is an extension of quantum field theory from Minkowski spacetime to a general curved spacetime. This theory uses a semi-classical approach; it treats spacetime as a fixed, classical background, while giving a quantum-mechanical description of the matter and energy propagating through that spacetime. A general prediction of this theory is that particles can be created by time-dependent gravitational fields (multigraviton pair production), or by time-independent gravitational fields that contain horizons. The most famous example of the latter is the phenomenon of Hawking radiation emitted by black holes.
An asymptotically flat spacetime is a Lorentzian manifold in which, roughly speaking, the curvature vanishes at large distances from some region, so that at large distances, the geometry becomes indistinguishable from that of Minkowski spacetime.
In general relativity, Kruskal–Szekeres coordinates, named after Martin Kruskal and George Szekeres, are a coordinate system for the Schwarzschild geometry for a black hole. These coordinates have the advantage that they cover the entire spacetime manifold of the maximally extended Schwarzschild solution and are well-behaved everywhere outside the physical singularity. There is no coordinate singularity at the horizon.
The concept of mass in general relativity (GR) is more subtle to define than the concept of mass in special relativity. In fact, general relativity does not offer a single definition of the term mass, but offers several different definitions that are applicable under different circumstances. Under some circumstances, the mass of a system in general relativity may not even be defined.
The mathematics of general relativity is complicated. In Newton's theories of motion, an object's length and the rate at which time passes remain constant while the object accelerates, meaning that many problems in Newtonian mechanics may be solved by algebra alone. In relativity, however, an object's length and the rate at which time passes both change appreciably as the object's speed approaches the speed of light, meaning that more variables and more complicated mathematics are required to calculate the object's motion. As a result, relativity requires the use of concepts such as vectors, tensors, pseudotensors and curvilinear coordinates.
In general relativity, an apparent horizon is a surface that is the boundary between light rays that are directed outwards and moving outwards and those directed outward but moving inward.
A horizon is a boundary in spacetime satisfying prescribed conditions.
In general relativity, the de Sitter–Schwarzschild solution describes a black hole in a causal patch of de Sitter space. Unlike a flat-space black hole, there is a largest possible de Sitter black hole, which is the Nariai spacetime. The Nariai limit has no singularities, the cosmological and black hole horizons have the same area, and they can be mapped to each other by a discrete reflection symmetry in any causal patch.
In astrophysics, an event horizon is a boundary beyond which events cannot affect an observer. Wolfgang Rindler coined the term in the 1950s.
In gravitational theory, the Bondi–Metzner–Sachs (BMS) group, or the Bondi–Van der Burg–Metzner–Sachs group, is an asymptotic symmetry group of asymptotically flat, Lorentzian spacetimes at null infinity. It was originally formulated in 1962 by Hermann Bondi, M. G. Van der Burg, A. W. Metzner and Rainer K. Sachs in order to investigate the flow of energy at infinity due to propagating gravitational waves. Instead of the expected ordinary four spacetime translations of special relativity associated with the well-known conservation of momentum and energy, they found, much to their puzzling surprise, a novel infinite superset of direction-dependent time translations, which were named supertranslations. Half a century later, this work of Bondi, Van der Burg, Metzner, and Sachs is considered pioneering and seminal. In his autobiography, Bondi considered the 1962 work as his "best scientific work". The group of supertranslations is key to understanding the connections to quantum fields and gravitational wave memories.
In theoretical physics, null infinity is a region at the boundary of asymptotically flat spacetimes. In general relativity, straight paths in spacetime, called geodesics, may be space-like, time-like, or light-like. The distinction between these paths stems from whether the spacetime interval of the path is positive, negative, or zero. Light-like paths physically correspond to physical phenomena which propagate through space at the speed of light, such as electromagnetic radiation and gravitational radiation. The boundary of a flat spacetime is known as conformal infinity, and can be thought of as the end points of all geodesics as they go off to infinity. The region of null infinity corresponds to the terminus of all null geodesics in a flat Minkowski space. The different regions of conformal infinity are most often visualized on a Penrose diagram, where they make up the boundary of the diagram. There are two distinct region of null infinity, called past and future null infinity, which can be denoted using a script 'I' as and . These two regions are often referred to as 'scri-plus' and 'scri-minus' respectively. Geometrically, each of these regions actually has the structure of a topologically cylindrical three dimensional region.
