Gravitational collapse: The story so far

An outstanding problem in gravitation theory and relativistic astrophysics today is to understand the final outcome of an endless gravitational collap se. Such a continual collapse would take place when stars more massive than few times the mass of the sun collapse under their own gravity on exhausti ng their nuclear fuel. According to the general theory of relativity, this results either in a black hole, or a naked singularity - which can communic ate with far away observers in the universe. While black holes are (almost) being detected and are increasingly used to model high energy astrophysica l phenomena, naked singularities have turned into a topic of active discuss ion, aimed at understanding their structure and implications. Recent develo pments here are reviewed, indicating future directions.