Past exam of the general relativity II course of the University of Oxford / 2017 / 2 / b / i

A nondegenerate Lorentzian metric requires $M\ne 0$; take $M>0$ as the radius convention. The original coordinates describe $\lambda >0$, with $\lambda =0$ a candidate boundary rather than an ordinary point of that chart. The change of coordinate givesSubstituting and cancelling the two terms proportional to $d{\lambda }^2/{\lambda }^2$ producesThe $(v,\lambda )$ block of this metric tensor has determinant $-M^2$ and inverse metricAll coefficients are smooth through $\lambda =0$, and the block has one negative and one positive eigenvalue. Together with the positive round two-sphere factor this is a regular Lorentzian metric. It extends to a neighborhood with either sign of $\lambda$. The usual polar-coordinate problem at the poles of the two-sphere is removed by separate angular charts. Therefore $\lambda =0$ is only a coordinate singularity of the original chart. This is the degenerate-horizon patch of Bertotti-Robinson spacetime.