2021/09/03 by Susan M. Scott, Ben E. Whale, Ben W. Whale
Physics and Astronomy · #Curvature #Divergence (linguistics) #Geodesic #Geodesics in general relativity #Gravitation #Gravitational singularity #Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories #Null (SQL) #Relativity and Gravitational Theory #Singularity #Statistical Mechanics and Entropy #gr-qc #msc:83C57 #msc:83C75
paper · pdf · doi:10.1142/s0218271821420074
published as International Journal of Modern Physics D (2021), 2142007 · This essay received an Honorable Mention in the 2021 Essay Competition of the Gravity Research Foundation (see https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5852e579be659442a01f27b8/t/609d66c823a9a352bc3b24c3/1620928201758/2021-GRF-Abstracts.pdf). Keywords: Singularity, completion, boundary, endpoint theorem, coordinates, singularity theorem, curvature, Kerr, Boyer-Lindquist, black hole
openalex publication_date 2021/09/03 · arxiv created 2021/09/09 · arxiv updated 2021/09/10 · openalex created_date 2021/09/13 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Roger Penrose’s 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics recognizes 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 does not 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.