Robert M. Wald
Published 1997-10-13, updated 1997-11-06Version 3
We review the status of the weak cosmic censorship conjecture, which asserts, in essence, that all singularities of gravitational collapse are hidden within black holes. Although little progress has been made toward a general proof (or disproof) of this conjecture, there has been some notable recent progress in the study of some examples and special cases related to the conjecture. These results support the view that naked singularities cannot arise generically.
Comments: 21 pages, plain latex, no figures. Corresponds closely to talk given at the April, 1997 APS meeting in Washington, D.C. A few references added
Extended Geometry of Black Holes
Pair production of black holes on cosmic strings
The cosmological gravitating $σ$ model: solitons and black holes
