Who of the following scientists proved that the stars with mass less than 1.44 times the mass of the Sun end up as White Dwarfs when they die?
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UPSC Civil Services preparation
- AEdwin Hubble
- BS. ChandrashekharCorrect
- CStephen Hawking
- DSteven Weinberg
Explanation
The correct answer is B because Indian-American astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrashekhar calculated the maximum mass a stable white dwarf star can have. This limit, known as the Chandrashekhar Limit, is approximately 1.44 times the mass of the Sun. He proved that if a dying star has a mass below this threshold, it will evolve into a white dwarf. If it exceeds this limit, the star will continue to collapse, potentially becoming a neutron star or a black hole. For this ground-breaking work, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983.
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