Quanta Magazine

Where Gravity Is Weak and Naked Singularities

Are Verboten
Recent calculations tie together two conjectures about gravity, potentially revealing new truths
about its elusive quantum nature.

By Natalie Wolchover

Mike Zeng for Quanta Magazine

Physicists have wondered for decades whether infinitely dense points known as singularities can
ever exist outside black holes, which would expose the mysteries of quantum gravity for all to see.
Singularities snags in the otherwise smooth fabric of space and time where Albert Einsteins
classical gravity theory breaks down and the unknown quantum theory of gravity is needed seem
to always come cloaked in darkness, hiding from view behind the event horizons of black holes. The
British physicist and mathematician Sir Roger Penrose conjectured in 1969 that visible or naked
singularities are actually forbidden from forming in nature, in a kind of cosmic censorship. But why

https://www.quantamagazine.org/where-gravity-is-weak-and-naked-singularities-are-verboten-20170620/ June 20, 2017

 Quanta Magazine

should quantum gravity censor itself?

Now, new theoretical calculations provide a possible explanation for why naked singularities do not
exist in a particular model universe, at least. The findings indicate that a second, newer
conjecture about gravity, if it is true, reinforces Penroses cosmic censorship conjecture by
preventing naked singularities from forming in this model universe. Some experts say the mutually
supportive relationship between the two conjectures increases the chances that both are correct.
And while this would mean singularities do stay frustratingly hidden, it would also reveal an
important feature of the quantum gravity theory that eludes us.

Its pleasing that theres a connection between the two conjectures, said John Preskill of the
California Institute of Technology, who in 1991 bet Stephen Hawking that the cosmic censorship
conjecture would fail (though he actually thinks its probably true).

The new work, reported in May in Physical Review Letters by Jorge Santos and his student Toby
Crisford at the University of Cambridge and relying on a key insight by Cumrun Vafa of Harvard
University, unexpectedly ties cosmic censorship to the 2006 weak gravity conjecture, which asserts
that gravity must always be the weakest force in any viable universe, as it is in ours. (Gravity is by
far the weakest of the four fundamental forces; two electrons electrically repel each other 1 million
trillion trillion trillion times more strongly than they gravitationally attract each other.) Santos and
Crisford were able to simulate the formation of a naked singularity in a four-dimensional universe
with a different space-time geometry than ours. But they found that if another force exists in that
universe that affects particles more strongly than gravity, the singularity becomes cloaked in a black
hole. In other words, where a perverse pinprick would otherwise form in the space-time fabric,
naked for all the world to see, the relative weakness of gravity prevents it.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/where-gravity-is-weak-and-naked-singularities-are-verboten-20170620/ June 20, 2017

 Quanta Magazine
George M. Bergman, Berkeley. Source: Archives of the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach

Roger Penrose in Berkeley, California, in 1978, nine years after proposing the cosmic censorship conjecture.

Santos and Crisford are running simulations now to test whether cosmic censorship is saved at
exactly the limit where gravity becomes the weakest force in the model universe, as initial
calculations suggest. Such an alliance with the better-established cosmic censorship conjecture
would reflect very well on the weak gravity conjecture. And if weak gravity is right, it points to a
deep relationship between gravity and the other quantum forces, potentially lending support to
string theory over a rival theory called loop quantum gravity. The unification of the forces happens
naturally in string theory, where gravity is one vibrational mode of strings and forces like
electromagnetism are other modes. But unification is less obvious in loop quantum gravity, where
space-time is quantized in tiny volumetric packets that bear no direct connection to the other
particles and forces. If the weak gravity conjecture is right, loop quantum gravity is definitely
wrong, said Nima Arkani-Hamed, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study who co-discovered
the weak gravity conjecture.

The new work does tell us about quantum gravity, said Gary Horowitz, a theoretical physicist at
the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The Naked Singularities

In 1991, Preskill and Kip Thorne, both theoretical physicists at Caltech, visited Stephen Hawking at
Cambridge. Hawking had spent decades exploring the possibilities packed into the Einstein
equation, which defines how space-time bends in the presence of matter, giving rise to gravity. Like
Penrose and everyone else, he had yet to find a mechanism by which a naked singularity could form
in a universe like ours. Always, singularities lay at the centers of black holes sinkholes in space-
time that are so steep that no light can climb out. He told his visitors that he believed in cosmic
censorship. Preskill and Thorne, both experts in quantum gravity and black holes (Thorne was one of
three physicists who founded the black-hole-detecting LIGO experiment), said they felt it might be
possible to detect naked singularities and quantum gravity effects. There was a long pause,
Preskill recalled. Then Stephen said, You want to bet?

The bet had to be settled on a technicality and renegotiated in 1997, after the first ambiguous
exception cropped up. Matt Choptuik, a physicist at the University of British Columbia who uses
numerical simulations to study Einsteins theory, showed that a naked singularity can form in a four-
dimensional universe like ours when you perfectly fine-tune its initial conditions. Nudge the initial
data by any amount, and you lose it a black hole forms around the singularity, censoring the
scene. This exceptional case doesnt disprove cosmic censorship as Penrose meant it, because it
doesnt suggest naked singularities might actually form. Nonetheless, Hawking conceded the
original bet and paid his debt per the stipulations, with clothing to cover the winners nakedness.
He embarrassed Preskill by making him wear a T-shirt featuring a nearly-naked lady while giving a
talk to 1,000 people at Caltech. The clothing was supposed to be embroidered with a suitable
concessionary message, but Hawkings read like a challenge: Nature Abhors a Naked Singularity.

The physicists posted a new bet online, with language to clarify that only non-exceptional
counterexamples to cosmic censorship would count. And this time, they agreed, The clothing is to
be embroidered with a suitable, truly concessionary message.

The wager still stands 20 years later, but not without coming under threat. In 2010, the physicists

https://www.quantamagazine.org/where-gravity-is-weak-and-naked-singularities-are-verboten-20170620/ June 20, 2017

 Quanta Magazine

Frans Pretorius and Luis Lehner discovered a mechanism for producing naked singularities in
hypothetical universes with five or more dimensions. And in their May paper, Santos and Crisford
reported a naked singularity in a classical universe with four space-time dimensions, like our own,
but with a radically different geometry. This latest one is in between the technical counterexample
of the 1990s and a true counterexample, Horowitz said. Preskill agrees that it doesnt settle the bet.
But it does change the story.

The Tin Can Universe

https://www.quantamagazine.org/where-gravity-is-weak-and-naked-singularities-are-verboten-20170620/ June 20, 2017

 Quanta Magazine

https://www.quantamagazine.org/where-gravity-is-weak-and-naked-singularities-are-verboten-20170620/ June 20, 2017

 Quanta Magazine

https://www.quantamagazine.org/where-gravity-is-weak-and-naked-singularities-are-verboten-20170620/ June 20, 2017

 Quanta Magazine

https://www.quantamagazine.org/where-gravity-is-weak-and-naked-singularities-are-verboten-20170620/ June 20, 2017

 Quanta Magazine
Lucy Reading-Ikkanda/Quanta Magazine

The new discovery began to unfold in 2014, when Horowitz, Santos and Benson Way found that
naked singularities could exist in a pretend 4-D universe called anti-de Sitter (AdS) space whose
space-time geometry is shaped like a tin can. This universe has a boundary the cans side which
makes it a convenient testing ground for ideas about quantum gravity: Physicists can treat bendy
space-time in the cans interior like a hologram that projects off of the cans surface, where there is
no gravity. In universes like our own, which is closer to a de Sitter (dS) geometry, the only
boundary is the infinite future, essentially the end of time. Timeless infinity doesnt make a very
good surface for projecting a hologram of a living, breathing universe.

Despite their differences, the interiors of both AdS and dS universes obey Einsteins classical gravity
theory everywhere outside singularities, that is. If cosmic censorship holds in one of the two
arenas, some experts say you might expect it to hold up in both.

Horowitz, Santos and Way were studying what happens when an electric field and a gravitational
field coexist in an AdS universe. Their calculations suggested that cranking up the energy of the
electric field on the surface of the tin can universe will cause space-time to curve more and more
sharply around a corresponding point inside, eventually forming a naked singularity. In their recent
paper, Santos and Crisford verified the earlier calculations with numerical simulations.

But why would naked singularities exist in 5-D and in 4-D when you change the geometry, but never
in a flat 4-D universe like ours? Its like, what the heck! Santos said. Its so weird you should work
on it, right? There has to be something here.

Weak Gravity to the Rescue

In 2015, Horowitz mentioned the evidence for a naked singularity in 4-D AdS space to Cumrun Vafa,
a Harvard string theorist and quantum gravity theorist who stopped by Horowitzs office. Vafa had
been working to rule out large swaths of the 10500 different possible universes that string theory
naively allows. He did this by identifying swamplands: failed universes that are too logically
inconsistent to exist. By understanding patterns of land and swamp, he hoped to get an overall
picture of quantum gravity.

Working with Arkani-Hamed, Lubo Motl and Alberto Nicolis in 2006, Vafa proposed the weak
gravity conjecture as a swamplands test. The researchers found that universes only seemed to make
sense when particles were affected by gravity less than they were by at least one other force. Dial
down the other forces of nature too much, and violations of causality and other problems arise.
Things were going wrong just when you started violating gravity as the weakest force, Arkani-
Hamed said. The weak-gravity requirement drowns huge regions of the quantum gravity landscape
in swamplands.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/where-gravity-is-weak-and-naked-singularities-are-verboten-20170620/ June 20, 2017

 Quanta Magazine

Courtesy of Jorge Santos

Jorge Santos (left) and Toby Crisford of the University of Cambridge have found an unexpected link between two
conjectures about gravity.

Weak gravity and cosmic censorship seem to describe different things, but in chatting with Horowitz
that day in 2015, Vafa realized that they might be linked. Horowitz had explained Santos and
Crisfords simulated naked singularity: When the researchers cranked up the strength of the electric
field on the boundary of their tin-can universe, they assumed that the interior was classical
perfectly smooth, with no particles quantum mechanically fluctuating in and out of existence. But
Vafa reasoned that, if such particles existed, and if, in accordance with the weak gravity conjecture,
they were more strongly coupled to the electric field than to gravity, then cranking up the electric
field on the AdS boundary would cause sufficient numbers of particles to arise in the corresponding
region in the interior to gravitationally collapse the region into a black hole, preventing the naked
singularity.

Subsequent calculations by Santos and Crisford supported Vafas hunch; the simulations theyre
running now could verify that naked singularities become cloaked in black holes right at the point
where gravity becomes the weakest force. We dont know exactly why, but it seems to be true,
Vafa said. These two reinforce each other.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/where-gravity-is-weak-and-naked-singularities-are-verboten-20170620/ June 20, 2017

 Quanta Magazine

Quantum Gravity
The full implications of the new work, and of the two conjectures, will take time to sink in. Cosmic
censorship imposes an odd disconnect between quantum gravity at the centers of black holes and
classical gravity throughout the rest of the universe. Weak gravity appears to bridge the gap, linking
quantum gravity to the other quantum forces that govern particles in the universe, and possibly
favoring a stringy approach over a loopy one. Preskill said, I think its something you would put on
your list of arguments or reasons for believing in unification of the forces.

However, Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute, one of the developers of loop quantum gravity, has
pushed back, arguing that if weak gravity is true, there might be a loopy reason for it. And he
contends that there is a path to unification of the forces within his theory a path that would need
to be pursued all the more vigorously if the weak gravity conjecture holds.

Given the apparent absence of naked singularities in our universe, physicists will take hints about
quantum gravity wherever they can find them. Theyre as lost now in the endless landscape of
possible quantum gravity theories as they were in the 1990s, with no prospects for determining
through experiments which underlying theory describes our world. It is thus paramount to find
generic properties that such quantum gravity theories must have in order to be viable, Santos said,
echoing the swamplands philosophy.

Weak gravity might be one such property a necessary condition for quantum gravitys consistency
that spills out and affects the world beyond black holes. These may be some of the only clues
available to help researchers feel their way into the darkness.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/where-gravity-is-weak-and-naked-singularities-are-verboten-20170620/ June 20, 2017