A team of scientists at Purple Mountain Observatory in China has determined that a non-rotating neutron star can't be much more than 2.25 solar masses, otherwise it would become a black hole.
When stars grow old and die, their mass determines their ultimate fate. Many supermassive stars have futures as neutron star s. But, the question is, how massive can their neutron star s get? That’s one that Professor Fan Yizhong and his team at Purple Mountain Observatory in China set out to answer. It turns out that a non-rotating neutron star can’t be much more than 2.25 solar masses. If it was more massive, it would face a much more dire fate: to become a black hole .
To figure this out, the team at Purple Mountain looked into what’s called the Oppenheimer limit. That’s the critical gravitational mass (abbreviated M) of a massive object. If a neutron star stays below that Oppenheimer limit, it will remain in that state. If it grows more massive, then it collapses into a black hole
Neutron Star Black Hole Mass Oppenheimer Limit Purple Mountain Observatory
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