Final States of Gravitational Collapse

We examine all of the black-hole geometries which can be analytically developed in terms of a parameter from the Schwarzschild geometry. It is shown that this analytic family is completely spanned by the Kerr-Newman space-times with $e^2+a^2<m^2$, where $e$, $a$, and $m$ denote charge, specific angular momentum, and mass. If general (nonspherical) gravitational collapse produces black holes and if analytic variation of the initial conditions of gravitational collapse causes analytic variation of the final space-time geometry of the black holes produced by the collapse, this result implies that the generic final state of gravitational collapse is a Kerr-Newman black hole, fully specified by its mass, angular momentum, and charge.