Chandrasekhar Limit

Chandrasekhar Limit, upper limit to the mass that a white dwarf star can have, about 1.4 times the mass of the Sun. If the mass of the white dwarf is greater than this limit, the star's own gravity will become so strong that the star will collapse into a neutron star or, for the highest masses, even a black hole. The reason that this can happen to a white dwarf but not to a normal star is because a white dwarf has run out of nuclear fuel and is producing no internal energy that would otherwise support it against the inward pull of gravity. The limit is named after Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who first calculated it in 1931, when he was just 20 years old.