Naked Singularities

CJames

It has been a while since I have posted a question, and I realize that has been stifiling me a little. Instead of learning, I've been getting involved in little quarles and I almost let it drive me away from PF as it did before.

So instead of falling back into that trap, I'm trying to gain some knowledge. I hope somebody is kind enough to provide it.

My knowledge of physics has thus far only been from the popular texts. I'll be in a university in threee months, learning the real thing. In the meantime, I am still curious about the things which I can apply no real math to, the complicated concepts of relativity, quantum mechanics, and string theory.

I always hear about naked singularities and traversable wormholes in the texts. But I've never quiet understood what was going on.

1. What makes a singularity naked? It has shed its event horizon (the only method I remember is through electrically overcharging the black hole, can't remember the others). But how can a singularity, a region of "infinite" curvature (undefined? "vertical" slope?) exist without the spacetime curvature surrounding it?

2. If the singularity emmerges from a Kerr blackhole, it is ringed in shape. Yet somehow the area inside this ring is a wormhole to another region of spacetime. Again, how is that possible without intense gravity, defined as the spacetime curvature the wormhole must "consist" of? (Incedentally, the most natural shape for a wormhole entrance is said to be a sphere, while the Kerr model seems to imagine it as a flat circle encompassed by the singularity.)

3. How much mass does it take to collapse such a singularity? It is said that if a human attempted to travel through it the wormhole would collapse. Where is the threshold for this collapse, as light is said to be perfectly capable of making its way through.

I know this is a lot of questions. And I will ask more within this thread. This is what the forums are about. Thank you for your time.

[:)] --Carter