Today we come face-to-face with a radical claim made about the theory of general relativity with Dr. Roy Kerr, PhD at the University of Cambridge and the man for whom the Kerr solution to the Einstein equation is named.
David: Is it true that astronomers ignored your 1965 presentation of the Kerr solution because they were too busy being excited about quasars?
Roy: They didn’t believe in theoretical rubbish! This changed very quickly when Roger Blandford showed how the accretion disc could solve their problems.
David: Can you describe the process by which one identifies singularities in black hole solutions?
Roy: There are no singularities in BHs. Nobody, including Penrose, has published a proof that there are. He proved something else and allowed people that proved singularities. I am writing a paper to show that there is nothing singular inside BHs, just a denser neutron star or similar and larger.
David: Do Kerr black holes have singularities?
Roy: No! My solution does, but so does an empty Newtonian sphere with its inverse square law. We know there is nothing singular for real bodies.
David: Recently you referred to the idea of singularities in black holes as religion. Can you explain?
Roy: Yes. Roger or Hawking made some unproven and unlikely claims. The rabbits then believe it must be true, even when the proof is replaced by an endless succession of similar unproved proofs. When a new proof is presented in mathematics it will be examined closely by other interested parties. Not so in cosmology.
David: Thank you Professor!