Session B7: The Quantum Nature of Gravitational Singularities

10:45 AM–12:33 PM, Saturday, April 12, 2008
Hyatt Regency St. Louis Riverfront (formerly Adam's Mark Hotel), - Rose Garden

Sponsoring Unit: GGR
Chair: Lior Burko, University of Alabama, Huntsville

Abstract: B7.00001 : The Nature of Classical Singularities

10:45 AM–11:21 AM

Preview Abstract

Author:

  Beverly K. Berger
    (National Science Foundation)

Almost 40 years ago, Penrose and Hawking proved that, for reasonable matter, some type of singular behavior would arise if gravitational fields were to become sufficiently strong. The nature of the singular behavior was not specified and examples exhibiting a wide variety of pathologies are known. Shortly thereafter, Belinskii, Lifshitz, and Khalatnikov (BKL) conjectured that singularities arising from generic gravitational collapse would be spacelike and local (in the sense that spatial derivatives would not be dynamically important so that each spatial point would evolve as a separate universe). The status of our knowledge about singularities in classical general relativity, both at a rigorous mathematical level and through numerical simulations, will be reviewed.