Singularities Can Exist Outside Black Holes In Four Dimensions

Editor: Philip Ragner | Tactical Investor

Singularities Can Exist Outside Black Holes

For the first time, physicists have demonstrated that a universe like ours with three spatial dimensions could actually host a naked singularity – an event so intense, the laws of physics would fall apart.

Until now, researchers have only been able to place naked singularities in five-dimensional universes, but by proving that they could theoretically exist in three spatial dimensions, these physicists have found something that could challenge Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

If you’re not familiar with naked singularities, think of them like a black hole that’s been turned inside-out – if you could take all the strangeness that’s inside a black hole, and expose it to the Universe as a naked entity, that’s what we’re talking about here.

No one’s ever detected a naked singularity in our Universe, but these hypothetical regions in space are predicted to form when huge stars collapse at the end of their lives, resulting in literally infinite density – something that our laws of physics cannot handle.

That means if a black hole’s unimaginably violent centre could potentially occur in open space, someone’s going to have to explain why general relativity – something that’s supposed to be universal – no longer applies.

“A naked singularity, if such a thing exists, would be an abrupt hole in the fabric of reality – one that would not just distort space-time, but would also wreak havoc on the laws of physics wherever it goes and lead to a catastrophic loss of predictability,” Avaneesh Pandey from the International Business Times explains. Full Story

Researchers have shown how a bizarrely shaped black hole could cause Einstein’s general theory of relativity, a foundation of modern physics, to break down. However, such an object could only exist in a universe with five or more dimensions.

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge and Queen Mary University of London, have successfully simulated a black hole shaped like a very thin ring, which gives rise to a series of ‘bulges’ connected by strings that become thinner over time. These strings eventually become so thin that they pinch off into a series of miniature black holes, similar to how a thin stream of water from a tap breaks up into droplets.

Ring-shaped black holes were ‘discovered’ by theoretical physicists in 2002, but this is the first time that their dynamics have been successfully simulated using supercomputers. Should this type of black hole form, it would lead to the appearance of a ‘naked singularity’, which would cause the equations behind general relativity to break down. The results are published in the journal Physical Review Letters. Full Story

Singularities Can Exist Outside Black Holes

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