TOPOLOGICAL CENSORSHIP AND THE TOPOLOGY OF BLACK-HOLES

A new result on topological censorship is presented. Roughly speaking, the result shows that, under suitable conditions, the topology of spa ce outside the event horizon must eventually be simple. In particular, cross sections of the event horizon must eventually be spherical. Thi s latter consequence of the main result generalizes in many respects t he classical theorem of Hawking that black hole boundaries in stationa ry black hole space-times are spherical. (C) 1995 American Institute o f Physics.