Test bodies and naked singularities: is the self-force the cosmic censor?

ABSTRACT

Jacobson and Sotiriou showed that rotating black holes could be spun up past the extremal limit by the capture of nonspinning test bodies, if one neglects radiative and self-force effects. This would represent a violation of the cosmic censorship conjecture in four-dimensional, asymptotically flat spacetimes. We show that for some of the trajectories giving rise to naked singularities, radiative effects can be neglected. However, for these orbits the conservative self-force is important, and seems to have the right sign to prevent the formation of naked singularities.