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Could spacetimes have singular manifolds?

Physics Asked by miguelification on February 3, 2021

Let’s take a spacetime as a pair $(M,g)$ where $M$ is the manifold and $g$ the metric.
I’ve seen that there exist a generalization of manifolds. This generalization consist in accept singularities in the manifold ( http://www.map.mpim-bonn.mpg.de/Manifolds_with_singularities#:~:text=Manifolds%20with%20singularities%20are%20geometric,are%20understood%20to%20be%20smooth. here we have a more formal definition and some works on this subject).
Some spacetimes have singularities defined by the incompleteness of geodesics, but these singularities are associated with the metric and not with the manifold in the sense that manifolds are (let’s say) "not singular". Could a singular spacetime $(M’,g)$ with $M’$ a manifold with singularities exist or is it senseless? (If it is possible, should $g$ be singular as well or is it possible a pair $(M’,g)$ with $g$ non-singular?)

One Answer

The link gives examples such as the union of two spheres, and in an example like this, any Riemannian metric defined on the spheres gets extended to one that is singular where the spheres intersect. This seems to me to be a setup that is guaranteed not to be of interest in classical relativity. The singularity guarantees that observers in a particular region can never do observations or make predictions about the regions that lie beyond the singularty.

Answered by user276945 on February 3, 2021

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