Volume singularities in general relativity

Abstract

We propose a new notion of singularity in general relativity which complements the usual notions of geodesic incompleteness and curvature singularities. Concretely, we say that a spacetime has a volume singularity if there exist points whose future or past has arbitrarily small spacetime volume: in particular, smaller than a Planck volume. From a cosmological perspective, we show that the (geodesic) singularities predicted by Hawking’s theorem are also volume singularities. In the black hole setting, we show that volume singularities are always hidden by an event horizon, prompting a discussion of Penrose’s cosmic censorship conjecture.