Observing Naked Singularities: Implications for Quantum Gravity

[windy miller]

A number of press outlets are reporting a new work that appears in Physical Review D that it might be possible to observe naked singularities.
See the story here:
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/C..._most_extreme_object_in_the_universe_999.html
It got me thinking about quantum gravity. Some theories of quantum gravity ( perhaps all?) claim to remove singularities so if these observations were to be made, would that mean we would have to throw quantum gravity theories that forbid singularities?

 

[PeterDonis]

The arxiv preprint of the paper is here (the published paper linked to in the spacedaily article is behind a paywall):

https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.08808

From a quick look, the paper appears to be using valid theoretical solutions (super-extremal Kerr vs. sub-extremal Kerr).

Some theories of quantum gravity ( perhaps all?) claim to remove singularities so if these observations were to be made, would that mean we would have to throw quantum gravity theories that forbid singularities?

We can't tell without having the actual theories. There might be a quantum version of the super-extremal Kerr solution that still predicts the same observations as those deduced in the paper for a naked singularity in the classical version of the super-extremal Kerr solution. In other words, the paper's claim to be able to distinguish naked singularities from black holes only applies to the classical solutions, since those are the only ones the paper analyzed.