Even the Minkowski space is holed

TL;DR

The paper critiques Geroch's 'hole-free' postulate in general relativity, arguing it is overly restrictive as it excludes even the simplest spacetime, Minkowski space.

Contribution

It challenges the validity of the 'hole-free' condition, showing it unnecessarily restricts physically reasonable spacetimes.

Findings

The 'hole-free' postulate excludes Minkowski space.

The postulate is too strong and not physically justified.

Alternative approaches are needed for spacetime completeness.

Abstract

To cure the lack of predictive power of general relativity Geroch proposed to complete the theory with an additional postulate that only "hole-free" spacetimes are permitted. I argue that this postulate is too strong -- it prohibits even the Minkowski space.