Chandrasekhar limit

The Chandrasekhar limit is the maximum mass of a stable white dwarf star.^[1] Building on work by others, the Indian physicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar worked on the calculation.^[2] He published series of papers between 1931 and 1935.^[3] The Chandrasekhar limit is about 1.4 times the mass of the Sun.^[4]

The Chandrasekhar limit is the mass above which electron degeneracy pressure in the star's core is not enough to balance the star's own gravitational self-attraction.^[5] Then, white dwarfs with masses over the limit would gravitationally collapse into a neutron star or black hole. However, white dwarfs usually explode before they undergo collapse. Those with masses under the limit remain stable as white dwarfs.

1. ↑ "Introducing Chandrasekhar limit". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 1 May 2015.^{[permanent dead link]}
2. ↑ Chandrasekhar's biographical memoir at the National Academy of Sciences, web page, accessed 12-I-2007.
3. ↑ On stars, their evolution and their stability Archived 2010-12-15 at the Wayback Machine, Nobel Prize lecture, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, December 8, 1983.
4. ↑ Sean Carroll 2007. The Teaching Company: Dark matter, dark energy: the dark side of the universe, Guidebook Part 2 page 44. "...Chandrasekhar limit: The maximum mass of a white dwarf star, about 1.4 times the mass of the Sun. Above this mass, the gravitational pull becomes too great, and the star must collapse to a neutron star or black hole..."
5. ↑ Electron degeneracy pressure is what makes solids seem solid.