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A Single, ‘Naked’ Black Hole Rewrites the History of the Universe | Quanta Magazine
(www.quantamagazine.org)
this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2025
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TIL beach waves are gravity waves.
I'm sorry to ask again, I have read the wikipedia article on naked singularity before asking the first time, but it reads as if it was written by physicists for physicists. But it is a theoretical possibility, right?
I (think i) know the size of a black hole's event horizon depends on its mass and angular speed. But the size of the object itself would be essentially zero, as the infinite density would imply. So a naked singularity would have to have no spin, no mass, and infinite density? That makes it clearly not theoretically possible, so my understanding of black holes is fundamentally flawed. But where?
It's kind of like string theory. Very technical, could theoretically happen, definitely proposed by experts, but currently no way to test or observe to prove it one way or another. So, could be true, or could be a wild idea that isn't actually real.
not a physicist, so can't get into it. just think that it's funny how such similar terms refer to a normal mundane thing and mind-blowing crazy stuff.
making them easy to confuse
Think of it as a scientific "what if" scenario. While there is, to the best of my limited knowledge, no reason to think such a thing is real - or even that it can be real - there's still much value in imagining it to be and proceeding accordingly. Having done so, one can then ask questions like "if it were real, what would the consequences be" (which can lead to theoretical insights that can later prove applicable to more practical things) or "what would we expect to see if observing such a thing" (which yields falsifiable tests, so we can go hunt in the data for instances of it). Another example of this sort of thing is the concept of a magnetic monopole.
Sometimes, these things prove to be potentially directly realizable (if not easily). One example of this is the Alcubierre drive. Initially, the concept was more or less discarded. Not because theory proved it unworkable, but because the required energy to achieve any significant effects was ludicrously impractical (mass/energy equivalent of Jupiter levels of impractical). Later developments drastically reduced the energy requirements to merely insane :)
It all just goes to show that we won't know what advances future developments might yield unless we try. Imagination is a wonderful thing.