Singularity Theorems: An Accessible Reference

[jinawee]

I've read Hawking's introduction: http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9409195v1, which are nice. I would like something that explains the other singularity theorems and how they are related to Big Bang. I've tried reading Hawking & Ellis but I can't understand most of the definitions.

 

[bcrowell]

By "accessible" do you mean understandable without a lot of prerequisite knowledge, as opposed to accessible online and not paywalled?

 

[jinawee]

By "accessible" do you mean understandable without a lot of prerequisite knowledge, as opposed to accessible online and not paywalled?

Yes. Motivating definitions, physical intuition, etc. But it doesn't have totally rigorous.

 

[bcrowell]

Although the main text of Hawking and Ellis is a pretty heavy slog, IIRC there is a very nice preview of the singularity theorems near the beginning of the book, which offered a pretty geometrically transparent argument.