We make a critical comparison between ultra-high energy particle collisions around an extremal Kerr black hole and that around an over-spinning Kerr singularity, mainly focusing on the issue of the timescale of collisions. We show that the time requi
red for two massive particles with the proton mass or two massless particles of GeV energies to collide around the Kerr black hole with Planck energy is several orders of magnitude longer than the age of the Universe for astro-physically relevant masses of black holes, whereas time required in the over-spinning case is of the order of ten million years which is much shorter than the age of the Universe. Thus from the point of view of observation of Planck scale collisions, the over-spinning Kerr geometry, subject to their occurrence, has distinct advantage over their black hole counterparts.
We explore the collision between two concentric spherical thin shells. The inner shell is charged, whereas the outer one is either neutral or charged. In the situation we consider, the charge of the inner shell is larger than its gravitational mass,
and the inside of it is empty and regular. Hence the domain just outside it is described by the overcharged Reissner-Nordstrom geometry whereas the inside of it is Minkowski. First, the inner shell starts to shrink form infinity with finite kinetic energy, and then the outer shell starts to shrink from infinity with vanishing kinetic energy. The inner shell bounces on the potential wall and collides with the ingoing outer shell. The energy of collision between these shells at their center of mass frame does not exceed the total energy of the system. By contrast, by virtue of the very large gamma factor of the relative velocity of the shells, the energy of collision between two of the constituent particles of these shells at their center of mass frame can be much larger than the Planck scale. This result suggests that the black hole or naked singularity is not necessary for ultra-high energy collision of particles.
