R. Kerr posted an essay on arxiv recently.
Kerr claims:
The consensus view for sixty years has been that all black holes have singularities. There is no direct proof of this, only the papers by Penrose (1) outlining a proof that all Einstein spaces containing a ”trapped surface” automatically contain FALL’s. This is almost certainly true, even if the proof is marginal. It was then decreed, without proof, that these must end in actual points where the metric is singular in some unspecified way. Nobody has constructed any reason, let alone proof for this. The singularity believers need to show why it is true, not just quote the Penrose assumption
But Kerr does not provide a specific citation/reference to the works of Penrose et al. where they made this assumption, instead Kerr just cites Penrose's main paper, which makes it challenging to verify if one is not intimate with the works of Penrose et al.
I have two closely related questions that I hope someone may please clarify:
- Where can this assumption (assuming Kerr presents it in a manner consistent with how Penrose et al. present it so as to avoid a straw-man argument) be unambiguously found in the works of Penrose et al.?
- Is Kerr correct in claiming that the above assumption is unproven?
As a side note/comment, I think it's unfortunate that Kerr seems to conflate Penrose et al.'s claims regarding the mathematics of GR with his perception of a consensus that views gravitational singularities actually existing in the Universe. Again, Kerr provides no references or support for his perception of a supposed consensus. IF Kerr hadn't confused these two things, it would be harder for people to dismiss his mathematical point (ie his real point) about Penrose et al.'s claims. Also, it doesnt help that Kerr only offers vague references to Penrose's works, rather than digging in and really showing the issues with specific references, and he cites himself 3 times... reminds me of Eddington trying to solve the theory of everything in his later years, but I digress.
Thanks in advance and happy holidays/new year to all!
