REPLY TO UNNIKRISHNAN ON NAKED SINGULARITIES

Dwivedi and Joshi (DJ) [2] have demonstrated the occurrence of a strong curvature naked singularity in the spherically symmetric gravitational collapse of inhomogeneous dust. In a recent paper Unnikrishnan (U) [8] has claimed that demonstrations such as these are unphysical. According to U, DJ arrived at a strong naked singularity because they started the collapse of the cloud from an infinite central density. We show, by means of an explicit demonstration, that this claim of U is incorrect. In fact, the strong naked singularity arises from a regular initial density profile which has the form rho(R) = rho(0) + rho(3)R(3) + O(R(4)) near the center, where rho(0) is the initial central density and is finite. U has missed out on these density profiles, thereby leading to his erroneous conclusion. We also note that in his paper u has given no proof either of the nakedness of the singularity, or of its strength. Thus his claims, besides being wrong, are not based on any mathematical derivation. We also point out other serious mistakes in that paper. In summary, U has no valid mathematical or physical objection to the work of Dwivedi and Joshi.