Index Key:  PHY068
Author:     Jim Murray
Subject:    What do naked singularities look like?
Text:       I just read an American Scientist article by Shapiro & Teukolsky 
about naked singularities forming from matter shaped as a prolate spheroid.  
How can a singularity not be cloaked in a black hole?  What would a naked 
singularity look like in space? 

Response #:  1 of 1
Author:      A. Smith
Text:        Well, a singularity is a very unpleasant thing in physics - 
basically it means you have a place where things "blow up" - that is, diverge 
to infinity, and it usually means there is something wrong with the theory.  
People up till now have not been too upset about singularities in Einstein's 
theories because they thought they were always cloaked in black holes.  Now it 
turns out they are not.  Basically, a black hole is defined by the paths that 
light takes.  Light cannot escape from inside a black hole.  Since part of 
this singularity is outside a black hole, presumably light can escape from it.  
But, since something in the gravitational fields is diverging at this point, 
it would definitely be a very unpleasant place to even be near to.  Probably 
would be fascinating to drop stuff into though - you could actually see matter 
being crushed and torn apart by arbitrarily large forces.