The Chandrasekhar limit is the maximum mass of a stable white dwarf star. The currently accepted value of the Chandrasekhar limit is about 1.4 M☉ (2.765×1030 kg).
In physical cosmology, Big Bang nucleosynthesis is the production of nuclei other than those of the lightest isotope of hydrogen during the early phases of the universe. This type of nucleosynthesis is thought by most cosmologists to have occurred from 10 seconds to 20 minutes after the Big Bang. It is thought to be responsible for the formation of most of the universe's helium, along with small amounts of the hydrogen isotope deuterium, the helium isotope helium-3 (3He), and a very small amount of the lithium isotope lithium-7 (7Li). In addition to these stable nuclei, two unstable or radioactive isotopes were produced: the heavy hydrogen isotope tritium and the beryllium isotope beryllium-7 (7Be). These unstable isotopes later decayed into 3He and 7Li, respectively, as above.
A quark star is a hypothetical type of compact, exotic star, where extremely high core temperature and pressure has forced nuclear particles to form quark matter, a continuous state of matter consisting of free quarks.
A strange star is a hypothetical astronomical object, a quark star made of strange quark matter.
An axion is a hypothetical elementary particle originally postulated by the Peccei–Quinn theory in 1977 to resolve the strong CP problem in quantum chromodynamics (QCD). If axions exist and have low mass within a specific range, they are of interest as a possible component of cold dark matter.
In physics, mirror matter, also called shadow matter or Alice matter, is a hypothetical counterpart to ordinary matter.
An exotic star is a hypothetical compact star composed of exotic matter, and balanced against gravitational collapse by degeneracy pressure or other quantum properties.
The Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit is an upper bound to the mass of cold, non-rotating neutron stars, analogous to the Chandrasekhar limit for white dwarf stars. If the mass of a neutron star reaches the limit it will collapse to a denser form, most likely a black hole.
A strangelet is a hypothetical particle consisting of a bound state of roughly equal numbers of up, down, and strange quarks. An equivalent description is that a strangelet is a small fragment of strange matter, small enough to be considered a particle. The size of an object composed of strange matter could, theoretically, range from a few femtometers across to arbitrarily large. Once the size becomes macroscopic, such an object is usually called a strange star. The term "strangelet" originates with Edward Farhi and Robert Jaffe in 1984. Strangelets can convert matter to strange matter on contact. Strangelets have been suggested as a dark matter candidate.
Gerald Edward Brown was an American theoretical physicist who worked on nuclear physics and astrophysics. Since 1968 he had been a professor at the Stony Brook University. He was a distinguished professor emeritus of the C. N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics at Stony Brook University.
Adam Burrows is a noted professor of astrophysical sciences at Princeton University.
James Michael Lattimer is a nuclear astrophysicist who works on the dense nuclear matter equation of state and neutron stars.
In nuclear physics, the symmetry energy reflects the variation of the binding energy of the nucleons in the nuclear matter depending on its neutron to proton ratio as a function of baryon density. Symmetry energy is an important parameter in the equation of state describing the nuclear structure of heavy nuclei and neutron stars.
Supernova neutrinos are weakly interactive elementary particles produced during a core-collapse supernova explosion. A massive star collapses at the end of its life, emitting on the order of 1058 neutrinos and antineutrinos in all lepton flavors. The luminosity of different neutrino and antineutrino species are roughly the same. They carry away about 99% of the gravitational energy of the dying star as a burst lasting tens of seconds. The typical supernova neutrino energies are 10 to 20 MeV. Supernovae are considered the strongest and most frequent source of cosmic neutrinos in the MeV energy range.
Christopher John Pethick is a British theoretical physicist, specializing in many-body theory, ultra-cold atomic gases, and the physics of neutron stars and stellar collapse.
Michael C. F. Wiescher is a German-American experimental nuclear physicist and astrophysicist, known for his laboratory research in nuclear physics connected with various astrophysical phenomena such as stellar evolution and explosion environments.
James "Jim" Ricker Wilson was an American theoretical physicist, known for his pioneering research in numerical relativity and numerical relativistic hydrodynamics.
George Michael Fuller is an American theoretical physicist, known for his research on nuclear astrophysics involving weak interactions, neutrino flavor-mixing, and quark matter, as well as the hypothetical nuclear matter.
Pycnonuclear fusion is a type of nuclear fusion reaction which occurs due to zero-point oscillations of nuclei around their equilibrium point bound in their crystal lattice. In quantum physics, the phenomenon can be interpreted as overlap of the wave functions of neighboring ions, and is proportional to the overlapping amplitude. Under the conditions of above-threshold ionization, the reactions of neutronization and pycnonuclear fusion can lead to the creation of absolutely stable environments in superdense substances.
