Make Entry -- Become an Editor -- Most Popular: (10, 25, 50, 75, 100)

   Help

Cosmic Censorship Hypothesis

Also known as the Naked Singularity - In 1969 Roger Penrose, who along with Stephen Hawking formulated the Singularity Theorems describing black holes, offered the Cosmic Censorship Hypothesis as a means to preserve causality in a universe containing black holes. Penrose's formulation is:

Nature abhors a naked singularity.

A Singularity would be "naked" if it is not isolated from the rest of the universe by a Cauchy horizon, an event horizon at the Schwarzchild radius, or both. There are weak and strong versions of the hypothesis.

The Big Bang singularity is postulated to have been naked, and naked singularities might exist in universes that are colossal black holes being observed from the inside. Apart from those conditions, all singularities in any universe must be shielded from view by an exclusive horizon.

Web Resources On Cosmic Censorship Hypothesis

Cosmic censorship hypothesis
Princeton News: Christodoulou Offers Strong Support for Cosmic Censorship

Book Resources On Cosmic Censorship Hypothesis

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory by Brian Greene
The Nature of Space and Time by Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose

Site Maps: Most Recent | Clusters | Browse
New: Graduate Student Job Opportunity