Abstract. We show that in odd spacetime dimensions greater than 4, all components of the unphysical Weyl tensor for arbitrary smooth, compact spatial support solutions of the linearized vacuum Einstein equation off of Minkowski spacetime fail to be smooth at null infinity at leading nonvanishing order. This implies that for nearly flat radiating spacetimes, the non-smoothness of the unphysical metric at null infinity manifests itself at the same order as it describes deviations from flatness of the physical metric. Therefore, in odd spacetime dimensions, it does not appear that conformal null infinity can be in any way useful for describing radiation.

Print publication: Issue 22 (21 November 2004)
Received 2 July 2004
Published 26 October 2004