Can Space-Time Rip? What Causes Tears & Healing?

[DuckAmuck]

If so, what causes it to rip? Does it "heal"? What would a rip look like to us? What is the tension threshold at which spacetime rips? What are the units of this "tension"?

 

[Nugatory]

Can space-time rip?

No.

Some other threads:
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/could-spacetime-be-torn.865046/
https://www.physicsforums.com/threa...space-time-fabric-be-ripped-or-broken.864368/

 

[BiGyElLoWhAt]

I'm not so sure. I suppose it depends what you mean by ripped. If ripped = infinitely depressed, then I think the answer to this would be yes, as that's a black hole, a "depression" in space time that when light travels along a path through that singularity, it never comes out, presumably because it never reaches the "bottom" of the "depression". At least that's been my interpretation. With this in mind, a singularity would be indistinguishable from a rip. However, I don't think you can talk about "holes" in space-time, as that's pretty meaningless. (There's a region of ? where space-time doesn't exist, so either a region of space, where time doesn't exist, or a region of time where space doesn't exist, or a region of something where neither exists. Doesn't seem to make much sense.)

 

[Ibix]

I think that the singularity at the centre of a black hole is general relativity's way of telling you that it can't describe what's going on there. We need a theory of quantum gravity to describe it properly. So I would be a bit cautious about interpreting it literally as a hole in spacetime.

 

[BiGyElLoWhAt]

Not literally, but indistinguishable. If you can differentiate the two. This singularity behaves as a hole would behave, in that light just sort of "disappears", as one would expect to happen with a rip.
Perhaps you are correct about the QG, but I think a proper description of the singularity (yet to come about) would suffice just as well. IMHO.