Non spherical sources of strong gravitational fields out of hydrostatic equilibrium

We describe the departure from equilibrium of matter distributions representing sources for a class of Weyl metric. It is shown that, for extremely high gravitational fields, slight deviations from spherical symmetry may enhance the stability of the system weakening thereby its tendency to a catastrophic collapse. For critical values of surface gravitational potential, in contrast with the exactly spherically symmetric case, the speed of entering the collapse regime decreases substantially , at least for specific cases. ∗Also at Departamento de F́ısica, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas, Venezuela; email:[email protected]