Chandrasekhar Limit

The Chandrasekhar limit (/tʃʌndrəˈʃeɪkər/) is the maximum mass of a stable white dwarf star. The limit was first indicated in papers published by Wilhelm Anderson and E. C. Stoner, and was named after Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, the Indian astrophysicist who independently discovered and improved upon the accuracy of the calculation in 1930, at the age of 19, in India. This limit was initially ignored by the community of scientists because such a limit would logically require the existence of black holes, which were considered a scientific impossibility at the time. White dwarfs resist gravitational collapse primarily through electron degeneracy pressure. (By comparison, main sequence stars resist collapse through thermal pressure.) The Chandrasekhar limit is the mass above which electron degeneracy pressure in the star's core is insufficient to balance the star's own gravitational self-attraction. Consequently, white dwarfs with masses greater than the limit would be subject to further gravitational collapse, evolving into a different type of stellar remnant, such as a neutron star or black hole. (However, white dwarfs generally avoid this fate by exploding before they undergo collapse.) Those with masses under the limit remain stable as white dwarfs.

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