Non-Gravitational Singularities

[Vorde]

I have just finished Black Holes and Time Warps by Kip Thorne as part of a high school reading class. Regardless of my personal thoughts of the book, I was captivated by the question, can a naked singularity exist?

I was thinking along the following route (I guess I should mention that I haven't taken any formal quantum physics classes and I might be completely wrong in everything I say):

A Black Hole can be considered a gravitational singularity, and the event horizon the photon horizon, meaning a being who perceived information using a different method that was attracted to the black hole differently might see a different sized event horizon, or possibly none at all. After thinking about it for a little bit, I remembered that everything in the universe has some mass (I deduced this by myself from E=MC², sorry if I'm wrong here), so the means nothing can ever escape from a gravitational singularity, and therefore, I figured that there could never be a naked singularity.

However, that got me thinking about singularities. From what I understand there are four fundamental forces (or three, I don't really get Electroweak), and gravity is one of them.

My question is; Is it possible to have a singularity that is caused primarily by one of the other fundamental forces, and therefore does not effect photons, which allow us to observe them?

 

[eljose79]

I appreciate your curiosity and critical thinking skills. Black holes and their properties continue to be a topic of fascination and research in the scientific community.

To answer your question, let's first define what a naked singularity is. A naked singularity is a hypothetical point in space where the gravitational pull is so strong that it causes space and time to become infinitely curved. This means that the laws of physics, as we know them, break down at this point. In other words, the singularity becomes a point of infinite density and infinite gravity.

Now, to address your question about whether a naked singularity can exist, the short answer is that we don't know for sure. The concept of a naked singularity is still a subject of debate and research in the scientific community. However, most theories and models suggest that naked singularities cannot exist in our universe.

One reason for this is the cosmic censorship hypothesis, which states that the laws of physics prevent naked singularities from being visible in our universe. This hypothesis is based on the idea that the universe is self-consistent and that singularities are not allowed to have an impact on the rest of the universe.

Another reason is that, as you mentioned, everything in the universe has mass and therefore is affected by gravity. This means that even if a singularity were caused by a force other than gravity, it would still have an effect on photons and other particles, making it observable.

That being said, there are some theories that suggest the possibility of naked singularities in certain conditions, such as in the early universe or in higher dimensions. However, these are still theoretical and have not been proven.

In conclusion, while we cannot definitively say whether a naked singularity can exist, current evidence and theories suggest that it is highly unlikely. But as scientists, we continue to explore and study these phenomena in order to better understand the universe we live in.