  In general relativity, gravitational collapse of matter fields ends with the
formation of a spacetime singularity, where the matter density becomes infinite
and standard physics breaks down. According to the weak cosmic censorship
conjecture, singularities produced in the gravitational collapse cannot be seen
by distant observers and must be hidden within black holes. The validity of
this conjecture is still controversial and at present we cannot exclude that
naked singularities can be created in our Universe from regular initial data.
In this paper, we study the radiation emitted by a collapsing cloud of dust and
check whether it is possible to distinguish the birth of a black hole from the
one of a naked singularity. In our simple dust model, we find that the
properties of the radiation emitted in the two scenarios is qualitatively
similar. That suggests that observational tests of the cosmic censorship
conjecture may be very difficult, even in principle.

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology;High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena