Cosmic censorship hypothesis

Common card · No. 313396

The weak and the strong cosmic censorship hypotheses are two mathematical conjectures about the structure of gravitational singularities in the context of general relativity. Singularities that arise in the solutions of Einstein's equations are typically hidden within event horizons, and therefore cannot be observed from the rest of spacetime. Singularities that are not so hidden are called naked. The weak cosmic censorship hypothesis was conceived by Roger Penrose in 1969 and posits that no naked singularity is visible from infinity (namely, it is "dressed" by an event horizon) while the strong cosmic censorship hypothesis asserts that generically, general relativity must be a deterministic theory and, thus, our universe must be globally hyperbolic.

Read on Wikipedia · Image Yukterez (Simon Tyran, Vienna). Source material for the Milky way background (also available on Commons): ESO/S.Brunier. Code for the relativistic raytracer and other angles: yukterez.net, CC BY-SA 4.0