NAKED SINGULARITIES IN SPHERICALLY SYMMETRICAL GRAVITATIONAL COLLAPSE- A CRITIQUE

One of the most important questions in the physics of gravitation phen omena is whether gravitational collapse can lead to the formation of s ingularities which are not hidden by an event horizon. The Cosmic Cens orship Conjecture (CCC) represents the hope that such a drastic event cannot happen in realistic physical situations. However, in the recent past several counter examples to the CCC were demonstrated by several researchers in situations of spherically symmetric gravitational coll apse. The disturbing aspect about these counter examples is that they are strong naked singularities-they can crush matter to zero volume an d can have a disastrous influence on causal physics. We examine these counter examples for their physical content by working through the dyn amical collapse of inhomogeneous dust and argue that these are not phy sically acceptable counter examples. Our main result is that the singu larities when naked are weak and when strong, strongly censored. The s trong naked singularities in the counter examples do not arise from dy namical collapse; they result from the intrinsically singular nature o f the initial density distributions chosen. The CCC seems to remain ro bust as far as spherically symmetric collapse is concerned.