Chandrasekhar limit
Límite de Chandrasekhar
- Date
- 1930 · confidence high
- Place
- Aboard the steamship Pilsna, after departing from Bombay (Mumbai), Maharashtra, India
- Credited to
- Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
- People
- 👤 Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar1910–1995
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
By combining special relativity with the quantum statistics of electrons, Chandrasekhar found that a white dwarf cannot exceed about 1.4 solar masses without collapsing. It fixed the fate of stars and opened the way to neutron stars and black holes.
He made the calculation at the age of 19 during the voyage from Bombay to Venice (July-August 1930); Anderson and Stoner obtained similar results, and Eddington publicly opposed the result.
What it led to
- theory of Type Ia supernovae
- prediction of neutron stars and stellar black holes
- 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics