Violation of the Carter-Israel conjecture and its astrophysical implications

Abstract

On the basis of the Carter-Israel conjecture, today we believe that some compact and massive objects in the Galaxy and in the Universe are Kerr black holes. However, this idea cannot yet be confirmed by observations. We can currently obtain reliable estimates of the masses of these objects, but we do not know if the space-time around them is described by the Kerr metric and if they have an event horizon. A fundamental limit for a Kerr black hole is the Kerr bound $|a_*| \le 1$. Here I discuss some astrophysical implications associated with the violation of this bound, which can thus be used to test the Carter-Israel conjecture.