For decades, astronomers have rested on the theory known as "
Chandrasekhar's limit", stated as follows...
in theory, the greatest possible mass of a stable cold star, above which it must collapse and become a black hole. It was named for the Indian astronomer Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who calculated that a cold star of more than about 1 1/2 times the mass of the sun would collapse under the force of its own gravity.
Apparently a recently discovered supernova in a galaxy 4 billion light years away, reached a mass about twice the size of our sun before exploding ! Here are some theories of how this could have happened...
The star could have been spinning so fast that centrifugal force pushed it beyond the usual limit
...
The explosion also could have come from two white-dwarf stars merging.
Another interesting excerpt...
The new supernova doesn't necessarily undermine that discovery or other previous research, the astronomers said. But scientists should be more cautious about incorporating the Chandrasekhar Limit into their future work
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