Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2005 iii Paper 62 1 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Use geometrized units and positive mass . The Schwarzschild metric initially describes an exterior region, not the whole black hole:Here is the areal radius and is Schwarzschild time, normalized at infinity. We must distinguish a removable coordinate singularity from a genuine curvature singularity. The Kretschmann scalar isIt is finite at and diverges at . Thus can be crossed in a better chart, whereas cannot be made a regular point by changing the coordinate chart.
First integrate the Schwarzschild tortoise coordinate:The radial metric becomes . Set ; the Ingoing Eddington-Finkelstein coordinates giveThe radial block has determinant minus one and smooth coefficients at , so it extends through the future Schwarzschild event horizon. Its ingoing radial null geodesics have constant , while the outgoing radial null geodesics obey . In the future interior both future-directed radial null families decrease ; is therefore an unavoidable future boundary for causal motion there. The outgoing chart similarly gives , extending through the past horizon. A single one of these null charts does not display both horizons or the entire extension.
To regularize both horizons together, introduce Kruskal–Szekeres coordinates in the original exterior:ThenFor the right side defining decreases monotonically from one to minus infinity. In fact its derivative is . Thus it determines a unique smooth wherever , including . At the radial metric coefficient is finite and nonzero, proving actual regularity of both horizons and their intersection, rather than merely relabelling the old coordinate divergence. Allowing all real with produces the simply connected maximal analytic extension, the Kruskal spacetime.
There are four regions of the Kruskal spacetime. The original exterior is ; a second asymptotically flat exterior is . The future black hole has and ; the past white hole has and the same range of areal radius. The horizon branches are and . Their intersection is a regular bifurcation surface, a two-sphere of radius , not the centre of the spacetime. Each point of the radial diagram represents a symmetry two-sphere.
Put and . Radial null geodesics have slopes , and the curvature singularities haveThe upper branch is the future spacelike Schwarzschild singularity; the lower branch is the white hole past singularity. The Killing vector field extends as . It is future directed in the original exterior and past directed in the other exterior for the chosen global time orientation; inside, this stationary vector is spacelike. In the future interior, is a time coordinate decreasing toward the singularity. For example, a radial infaller of unit specific Killing energy obeys and reaches from the horizon in finite proper time . The curvature divergence and this geodesic endpoint show why the extension stops there.
For the global causal picture, compactify the null coordinates using , and let , . The conformal compactification rescales the metric to remove the coordinate factors from the radial metric while preserving its null directions. Since gives on the two singular branches, they become the horizontal lines . The resulting Penrose diagram displays the two exteriors, each with its own past null infinity, future null infinity and spatial infinity, plus the future and past interiors. The singularities are spacelike boundaries; the horizons are interior null surfaces. Future event horizons separate events that can escape to an exterior's future null infinity from events in the black-hole interior.
Kruskal and compactified diagrams of the maximal Schwarzschild extension, showing both exteriors, horizons and spacelike singularities
. Details. The time-symmetric spatial slice has a bridge between the exteriors, but it is not a traversable passage. Future-directed causal curves have nondecreasing and . Moving from the right exterior to the left would require to decrease from positive to negative; the reverse passage would require to decrease. Both are impossible. This proves the non-traversability of the Schwarzschild bridge. The complete eternal vacuum extension has two exteriors, a black hole and a white hole; it has no causal route between its exteriors. A black hole made by stellar collapse is a different global spacetime: its matter-filled past replaces the white hole region, and it normally has only one exterior. The vacuum extension constructed here should not be mistaken for the collapse history of a single star.
With electric charge, spherical electrovacuum instead gives the Reissner-Nordstrom metric, in an electromagnetic normalization absorbing the charge conversion constants:For , there are two simple horizons. Outside the metric is static; between and , and is timelike. Inside , again, so is spacelike and the singularity is timelike. The outer horizon is the event horizon; the inner horizon is a Cauchy horizon. The same logarithmic tortoise-coordinate and exponential-null-coordinate method crosses each simple horizon locally, but one exponential scale does not regularize both simultaneously: their surface gravities have different magnitudes,Continuing the exact metric through successive inner horizons produces repeated blocks with further exteriors, and evolution beyond a Cauchy horizon is not uniquely fixed by data on the original Cauchy hypersurface. The timelike singularity can be avoided by some trajectories in this ideal extension, unlike the unavoidable spacelike singularity of the future Schwarzschild spacetime interior. However, the enormous inner-horizon blueshift makes this exact continuation unstable: perturbations can cause mass inflation. This is an important qualification on the global structure of a charged spherical black hole.
At the two horizons coalesce, and surface gravity is zero. The horizon is a degenerate Killing horizon, the tortoise-coordinate divergence becomes a pole and the ordinary nondegenerate Kruskal spacetime construction must be replaced. The exterior develops an infinitely long spatial throat and the formal Hawking temperature vanishes. For , no real zero of remains: the electrovacuum solution has a naked singularity, not a black hole. Consequently arbitrarily allowing charge changes the causal structure, not just the horizon radius.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2010 iii Paper 54 2 d Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
In the final Schwarzschild spacetime, an outgoing ray with escapes to future null infinity, whereas one with cannot do so and ends at the Schwarzschild singularity. Their boundary is the outgoing null geodesic . Since the final region continues indefinitely, the boundary of the causal past of future null infinity there is exactly that Schwarzschild event horizon. Equivalently, integrating the outgoing equation backward from this final boundary selects the complete event horizon. ThusThe original Penrose diagram below shows the right-hand exterior and black-hole interior appropriate to ingoing coordinates. The green band is the ingoing accretion interval; the dashed blue curve is the spherical apparent horizon . Outgoing null geodesics escaping to future null infinity lie to the right of the red event horizon; those to its left terminate on the future spacelike singularity. In the final stationary region the two horizons coincide. The red event horizon already lies outside before the ingoing matter arrives, because its position is fixed by the future escape criterion.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 iii Paper 52 1 a Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Use geometrized units and metric signature , with . In the exterior of Schwarzschild spacetime, put . The Schwarzschild tortoise coordinate satisfiesThe retarded and advanced null coordinates and then give . The logarithmic divergence of suggests exponentiating these null coordinates. In the right exterior define the Kruskal–Szekeres coordinatesTheir product eliminates :Since and , the Schwarzschild metric becomesHere is an implicitly defined function of . The derivative of the right side with respect to is , which is nonzero at . The inverse function theorem therefore makes smooth across that surface, and the coefficient of tends to . Thus the Schwarzschild event horizon is a coordinate singularity of the original chart, while this Lorentzian metric remains regular there.
Extend the Kruskal–Szekeres coordinates to all real with . The signs give two exterior regions, and , a future black hole region , and a past white hole region . The event horizons are or , intersecting at the bifurcation surface. The boundary has and is a genuine Schwarzschild singularity, as the Kretschmann scalar diverges there.
Finally, and give and a radial metric proportional to . Hence radial null geodesics have slopes , the event horizons are , and the singular boundaries are . This constructs the maximal Kruskal extension; a black hole produced by collapse need not contain the second exterior or the white hole of that eternal extension.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2016 iii Paper 311 1 a ii Solution Created 2026-10-06 Updated 2026-10-14
The radial null geodesics satisfyThe ingoing family has , with decreasing toward the future; its tangent is affinely parametrized because . The outgoing family hasAway from the Schwarzschild event horizon, integration gives . These are null geodesics up to reparametrization: a null direction in the two-dimensional radial geometry is automatically pregeodesic, and the angular geodesic equations are satisfied by constant angles. On the Schwarzschild event horizon the outgoing family instead has , with tangent proportional to .
In a Finkelstein diagram, plot vertically and horizontally. Ingoing rays obey ; outgoing rays obeyOutside the Schwarzschild event horizon, outgoing rays increase ; on it they remain at ; inside it they decrease even though increases. Thus both radial future null directions point toward smaller inside the black hole. Every future timelike direction lies between these null directions, so it also moves toward smaller there.
Radial light rays in ingoing Eddington-Finkelstein coordinates across the Schwarzschild horizon
. Details. Arrows show future propagation. The vertical red line is the Schwarzschild event horizon; the black boundary at is the Schwarzschild singularity.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2016 iii Paper 311 1 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
A spacetime is geodesically complete if every maximal geodesic has an affine parameter ranging over all of . For timelike geodesics this is equivalent to unbounded proper time in both directions. An extendible geodesic segment can be prolonged in the same spacetime; an inextendible geodesic cannot. A finite coordinate endpoint need not imply finite affine parameter.
For the Kruskal spacetime, use withIn the right exterior . A truncated ray , is an extendible geodesic of radial null type: neither artificial endpoint is a spacetime boundary. A future ray in the black hole reaches , hence , and is inextendible geodesic and future null-geodesically incomplete. Its Killing energy gives , so the Schwarzschild singularity occurs at finite affine parameter. The maximal continuation toward the past supplies the other half of this same null geodesic.
There is no inextendible, complete radial timelike geodesic in positive-mass Kruskal spacetime. This requested example is impossible as printed. For a radial timelike geodesic, the conserved Killing energy and normalization giveIf , has at most one turning point, a maximum ; a maximal trajectory runs from the white hole Schwarzschild singularity to the Schwarzschild singularity. If , there is no finite turning point; one end can lie at infinity but the other reaches . The exceptional trajectory through the bifurcation surface also reaches in both time directions. Near ,whose integral is finite. Constant- radial timelike curves are accelerated, not geodesics.
Two plausible repairs have different meanings. Removing “radial” permits a complete circular timelike geodesic at , with nonzero angular momentum and proper time ranging over . Replacing “timelike” by “null” permits a complete horizon null geodesic: , , with an affine parameter. The Penrose diagram shows both repairs explicitly, together with the two valid requested examples; the circular trajectory is only a radial projection and is labelled as nonradial.
Kruskal causal diagram with extendible and incomplete null rays and explicitly labelled repairs to the impossible radial timelike example
. Details. The horizontal boundaries are the Schwarzschild singularities, diagonal dashed lines are the Killing horizons, and outer diagonal edges are null infinity.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2024 iii Paper 309 4 e Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
The curvature 2-forms show that orthonormal curvature components grow as . The geodesic deviation equation converts them into the relative acceleration of nearby parts of an observer. As , the Schwarzschild tidal force stretches radial separations and compresses transverse separations with unbounded magnitude. An extended body therefore undergoes destructive tidal deformation before reaching the Schwarzschild singularity.



