Formation of naked singularities: The violation of cosmic censorship

Abstract

We use a new numerical code to evolve collisionless gas spheroids in full general relativity. In all cases the spheroids collapse to singularities. When the spheroids are sufficiently compact, the singularities are hidden inside black holes. However, when the spheriods are sufficiently large, there are no apparent horizons. These results lend support to the hoop conjecture and appear to demonstrate that naked singularities can form in asymptotically flat spacetimes.