2024/12/01 by Avery E. Broderick, Kiana Salehi · 6 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Black hole (networking) #Cosmic censorship hypothesis #Event (particle physics) #Event horizon #Galaxy #Gravitational singularity #Naked singularity #Physics #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Quantum mechanics #Supermassive black hole
paper · doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ad90aa
published in The Astrophysical Journal 977(2), 249 (IOP Publishing)
openalex publication_date 2024/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/27
Abstract The imaging of Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) and the supermassive black hole at the center of Messier 87 (M87*) by the Event Horizon Telescope constrains the location and nature of emission from these objects. Coupled with flux limits from the near-infrared through the ultraviolet, the attendant size constraints provide strong evidence for the absence of an accretion-powered photosphere, and therefore for the existence of an event horizon about an astrophysical black hole. Here, we demonstrate that a broad class of naked singularities exhibit inner turning points for time-like geodesics, and therefore may generically be excluded, regardless of the nature and unknown physical impact of the singularity itself, subject to the single weak assumption that its nongravitational impact is localized to its immediate vicinity. While we restrict our attention to static, spherically symmetric spacetimes, we are nevertheless able to exclude or constrain a large number of commonly invoked naked singularity spacetimes in this way.