What is the official name for the point at which a star's gravity gets too strong and collapses on itself?

Question

It was named after the man who figured this out.

I had stated it more simply in a previous post and received incorrect answers such as supernova. Thank you for your answers and for understanding what i meant!!

Answer 1

That would be the Chandrasekhar limit, named after Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. Any stellar body whose mass exceeds the Chandrasekhar limit (approximately 1.44 solar masses) will be too massive to form a white dwarf star, because a white dwarf star is supported by electron degeneracy pressure and the limit defines the maximum mass that can be thereby supported. Such a star will collapse into a neutron star or a black hole.

Answer 2

Actually, a star's gravity never increases unless it's mass increases. What collapses a star is gravity, but not just gravity, It's actually a failure of the balancing of inward pressure due to gravity and the outward pressure due to the star's energy production in it's core. Only when the core cannot maintain it's supply of outward pressure does a star begin to collapse.

The core does this when it exhausts nuclear fuel that makes up the star. Right now the Sun is converting hydrogen nuclei into helium nuclei. Doing this releases energy. Once the hydrogen is gone, helium is fused. The process continues up the periodic table (by multiples of 4, if I'm correct) until Iron is reached. At that point, fusion cannot yield any energy and the core cannot sustain itself.

The initial mass of the star determines it's fate as a white dwarf, a neutron star or a black hole. If it sheds mass during the red giant phase then the initial mass must be at the Chandrashekar limit to make a black hole.

Answer 3

The mass itself would be meaningless. Unless the mass is confined to a sufficiently small volume, the gravity wouldn't be strong enough to collapse it. I believe it's know as the Schwartzfield radius, or the radius a given mass must achieve to collapse into a black hole. But since you asked, when a star is dying and it collapses onto itself, if the mass exceeds the Chandrashakar limit then the force of the collapse is enough to bring the star to within the Schwartzfield radius and a black hole will form.

Answer 4

Like DavidK93 said, it's the Chandrasekhar limit. But it's not "official" -- why would government officials get involved in this? It's just that 99.9% of scientists call it by that name.

You should ask more simply, "what is the name for ...".