30.01.2019 (Wednesday)

Cosmic censorship violation and black hole collisions in higher dimensions

Regular Seminar Roberto Emparan (ICREA, Barcelona)

at:
13:15 KCL
room S2.49
abstract:

The cosmic censorship conjecture raises the question of whether classical gravitational dynamics can drive a low-energy configuration into an accessible regime of quantum gravity, with Planck-scale curvatures and energy densities visible by distant observers. I will present evidence that cosmic censorhip is violated in the quintessential phenomenon of General Relativity: the collision and merger of two black holes. It only requires a sufficient total angular momentum in a collision in high enough number of dimensions. Nevertheless, I will argue that even if cosmic censorship is violated in this and in some other know instances, its spirit remains unchallenged: classical relativity describes the physics seen by observers outside the black holes accurately, with only minimal quantum input that does not entail macroscopic disruptions.