Rehabilitating space-times with NUTs

Understand

We revisit the Taub-NUT solution of the Einstein equations without time periodicity condition, showing that the Misner string is still fully transparent for geodesics.

• In this case, analytic continuation can be carried out through both horizons leading to a Hausdorff spacetime without a central singularity, and thus geodesically complete.
• Furthermore, we show that, in spite of the presence of a region containing closed time-like curves, there are no closed causal {\em geodesics}.
• Thus, some longstanding obstructions to accept the Taub-NUT solution as physically relevant are removed.