Prove weak cosmic censorship for generic 4D vacuum gravitational collapse · revision history

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Title
Prove weak cosmic censorship for generic 4D vacuum gravitational collapse
Plain
Weak cosmic censorship says that collapsing matter or gravitational waves never produce a singularity visible from far away, except in finely tuned cases. It has been proved only under strong symmetry assumptions.
Precise
For generic asymptotically flat initial data for the 3+1 vacuum Einstein equations (or Einstein equations with physically reasonable matter), prove that the maximal globally hyperbolic development has a complete future null infinity. An answer is a proof, or a counterexample that persists under an open set of perturbations of the data.
Settled by
A proof of completeness of future null infinity for generic asymptotically flat vacuum data, or a stable counterexample.
Kind
well-posed
Answer type
proof
References
(empty)
Literature status
open
Status note
Proved for spherically symmetric Einstein-scalar collapse (Christodoulou 1999); non-generic naked singularities exist for vacuum (Rodnianski and Shlapentokh-Rothman 2019); the generic 4D vacuum case is open as of 2026.
Posed since
1969