Indian astrophysics theory raises debate world-wide

The Indian scientific work on the final fate of massive collapsing stars,titled as ‘Naked singularities’ has been featured in the cover story of the recent issue of an international magazine ‘Scientific Americans’.

The prediction,if discovered,will open up a vast number of exciting possibilities in fundamental physics and cosmology,said the author of the paper Pankaj Joshi from Mumbai.

The collapse of massive stars is inevitable in the universe which creates ‘singularities’ as described by Albert Einstein’s theory.

Singularity is the region of the universe of arbitrarily huge mass density (billions of times more than Sun’s density) and other physical quantities.

When they are visible,they are termed ‘quantum stars’ or ‘naked singularity’,explained Prof Joshi adding that when not visible they are termed ‘singularity’.

Joshi,working at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR),has published several research papers in international journals during the past two decades,including Cambridge Monograph on Mathematical Physics in 2007.

His recent article in ‘Scientific American’ is being extensively discussed in a much wider circle world-over.

Discussion has already begun on hundreds of websites and blogs which have termed the Indian work as a “thought provoking” one,a TIFR scientist said.

The phenomenon of massive collapsing star is one of the most amazing truths of nature introduced by science,Joshi said.

Explaining his theory,Joshi said When a star starts collapsing and shrinking under the force of its own gravity on running out of its internal nuclear fuel,a singularity develops.

This is one of the most exciting questions in astrophysics and modern cosmology,where an amazing inter-ply of the key-forces of nature,including the gravity and quantum takes place,he added.

This is an outstanding unresolved issue that excites both physicists and laymen,beginning all the way eight decades ago with the classic work of Nobel Laureate S Chandrasekhar on dying stars,Joshi said.

“This holds the key secrets to man’s search for a unified understanding of all forces of nature and may have the most exciting implications for astronomy and high energy astrophysics,” he added.

A star,of millions of kilometres size would shrink and collapses within seconds after living for millions of years.

“As per the current understanding,it was one such singularity that created our expanding universe as we see it today,” Joshi said.

“As the star collapses,an ‘event horizon’ of gravity may develop,which is one way membrane that allows only entry but no exits,Joshi said adding if the star enters the horizon before it collapsed to singularity,it results in a ‘black hole’,the permanent graveyard for the star.

The asumption that massive collapsing stars always create black holes is called ‘cosmic censorship’,which is the foundation of all of black hole physics and its astrophysical applications.

In recent years,however,a series of collapse models have been developed where the horizons failed to develop in the collapse of a massive star which Joshi’s article has described.

This is a most exciting scenario,where the singularity then becomes visible to satellites,which can actually see the quantum gravity play near these visible ultra-dense regions,or ‘naked singularity’,Joshi,explained.

Extremely energetic shock waves can emerge here and this may be related to very high high energy cosmic phenomena like cosmic Gamma Ray Bursts which are not understood today.

The Editor-in-Chief of Scientific American John Rennie even gave a talk on ‘naked singularity meets social media’ after the publication of the issue at the Silicon Valley.