Destroying black holes with test bodies

TL;DR

This paper reviews how test bodies could potentially destroy black holes by pushing them over extremal limits, challenging the cosmic censorship conjecture, and emphasizes the importance of including radiative and self-force effects.

Contribution

It provides a review of previous results on over-spinning or over-charging black holes using test bodies, highlighting the need to consider additional effects.

Findings

Black holes can be over-spun or over-charged in the test body approximation.

Radiative and self-force effects are crucial for accurate tests of cosmic censorship.

Focus mainly on neutral black holes and their extremal limits.

Abstract

If a black hole can accrete a body whose spin or charge would send the black hole parameters over the extremal limit, then a naked singularity would presumably form, in violation of the cosmic censorship conjecture. We review some previous results on testing cosmic censorship in this way using the test body approximation, focusing mostly on the case of neutral black holes. Under certain conditions a black hole can indeed be over-spun or over-charged in this approximation, hence radiative and self-force effects must be taken into account to further test cosmic censorship.