New Singularities in Unexpected Places

Abstract

Spacetime singularities have been discovered which are physically much weaker than those predicted by the classical singularity theorems. Geodesics evolve through them and they only display infinities in the derivatives of their curvature invariants. So far, these singularities have appeared to require rather exotic and unphysical matter for their occurrence. Here we show that a large class of singularities of this form can be found in a simple Friedmann cosmology containing only a scalar-field with a power-law self-interaction potential. Their existence challenges several preconceived ideas about the nature of spacetime singularities and impacts upon the end of inflation in the early universe.

4 pages. Essay for Gravity Research Foundation

References in corpus (3)

• Classical Stability of Sudden and Big Rip Singularities
• A General Sudden Cosmological Singularity
• 'The End'

Cited by in corpus (14)

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• The quantum realm of the "Little Sibling" of the Big Rip singularity
• Preinflationary dynamics of $\alpha -$attractor in loop quantum cosmology
• Existence of New Singularities in Einstein-Aether Theory
• The fate of bound systems through Sudden Future Singularities
• Revisiting pre-inflationary universe of family of $\alpha -$attractor in loop quantum cosmology
• Singular inflation from Born-Infeld-f(R) gravity
• Sudden Future Singularities in Quintessence and Scalar-Tensor Quintessence Models
• Sudden cosmological singularities in Aether scalar-tensor theories
• Singularities in inflationary cosmological models
• What can the anthropic principle tell us about the future of the dark energy universe?
• Remarks on inhomogeneous anisotropic cosmology
• Sudden Future Singularities and their observational signatures in Modified Gravity
• The Cosmological Arrow of Time and the Retarded Potentials