Cosmic censorship hypothesis

In general relativity, the cosmic censorship hypothesis, first formulated by Roger Penrose in 1964, states that a naked singularity, a gravitational singularity without an event horizon, cannot exist.

It is believed to be incorrect as there have been computer simulations of disks which collapse into a naked singularity.

The theoretical existence of naked singularities is important because their existence would mean that it would be possible to observe the collapse of an object to infinite density.

Computer simulations of the collapse of a disk of dust have indicated that these objects can exist and thus the Cosmic censorship hypothesis does not hold. Stephen Hawking lost a bet about this question.