Astronomers might be mistaking 'naked' singularities for black holes because they look almost identical to our telescopes.
March 24, 2026
Original Paper
Degeneracy in Accretion Disk Spectra from Naked Singularities and Kerr Black Holes: Application to the AGN MCG-06-30-15
arXiv · 2603.20282
The Takeaway
General Relativity predicts the existence of naked singularities—infinitely dense points not hidden behind an event horizon—but they have never been confirmed. This study shows that their light signatures are so similar to spinning black holes that we may have already seen them and misidentified them.
From the abstract
Theoretical studies suggest that gravitational collapse can form either a black hole or a visible (naked) singularity. Identifying observational signatures that distinguish these two types of collapsed objects is a holy grail of physics. Here, we examine whether relativistic accretion disk spectra can provide such a test. We construct an additive table model for a thin accretion disk in the Joshi-Malafarina-Narayan (JMN-1) naked singularity geometry matched to a Schwarzschild exterior and fit it