What is the Chandrasekhar Limit?

The Chandrasekhar limit refers to the highest mass of a white dwarf, which is about 3 × 10 ³⁰ kg, which is 1.44 times the mass of the sun. This limit was calculated by Chandrasekhar. The results of calculations will vary slightly depending on the structure and temperature of the nucleus.

Chandrasekhar Limit

On the other hand, stars with a mass greater than the Chandrasekhar limit will run out of fuel when they run out of gas: in some cases, they will explode or throw enough material to Mass is reduced to the limit to avoid catastrophic gravitational collapse. But it's hard to believe that this will happen no matter how big the star is. How do you know that it must lose weight? Even if every star manages to lose enough weight to avoid collapsing, what will happen if you add more mass to a white dwarf or neutron star to exceed its limit? Will it collapse to infinite density? Eddington was shocked by this, and he refused to believe the results of Chandrasekhar. Eddington believes that a star cannot collapse to a point. This is the opinion of most scientists: Einstein himself wrote a paper announcing that the star's volume will not shrink to zero. The hostility of other scientists, especially his former teacher, the main authority on stellar structure, Eddington, led Chandraseká to abandon his work in this area and turn to other astronomical issues such as the stellar movement. However, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1983, at least in part because of his early work on the mass limits of cold stars. Chandrasekhar pointed out that the principle of incompatibility cannot prevent stars with masses greater than the limit of Chandrasekhar from collapsing.