Cosmic censorship,black holes,and particle orbits

Perhaps one of the main reasons for believing in the cosmic censorship hypothesis is the disquieting nature of the alternative: the existence of naked singularities, and hence loss of predictability, the possibility of closed timelike lines, and so forth. The consequences of assuming the cosmic censorship hypothesis can also be somewhat strange and unexpected. In particular, we apply Hawking's black hole area theorem to the study of particle orbits near a Schwarzschild black hole. If the cosmic censorship hypothesis (and hence the area theorem) is true, then there exist stable near-circular orbits arbitrarily close to the horizon atr=2M.This essay was awarded the third prize for 1978 by the Gravity Research Foundation. (Ed.)Work supported in part by the National Science Foundation contract PHY76-20029.