Gravitational Collapse with Non–vanishing Tangential Stresses Ii: a Laboratory for Cosmic Censorship Experiments

The general exact solution describing the dynamics of anisotropic elastic spheres supported only by tangential stresses is reduced to a quadrature using Ori’s mass–area coordinates. This leads to the explicit construction of the root equation governing the nature of the central singularity. Using this equation, we formulate and motivate on physical grounds a conjecture on the nature of this singularity. The conjecture covers a large sector of the space of initial data; roughly speaking, it asserts that addition of a tangential stress cannot undress a covered dust singularity. The root equation also allows us to analyze the case of self–similar spacetimes and to get some insight on the role of stresses in deciding the nature of the singularities in this case.