Spacetime Singularities and Cosmic Censorship Conjecture: A Review with Some Thoughts

Understand

The singularity theorems of Hawking and Penrose tell us that singularities are common place in general relativity.

• Singularities not only occur at the beginning of the Universe at the Big Bang, but also in complete gravitational collapses that result in the formation of black holes.
• If singularities - except the one at the Big Bang - ever become "naked", i.e., not shrouded by black hole horizons, then it is expected that problems would arise and render general relativity indeterministic.
• For this reason, Penrose proposed the cosmic censorship conjecture, which states that singularities should never be naked.