Stars and Black Holes

Physicists began to believe in black holes when research revealed new information about the constitution of stars and their life cycles, indicating that a black hole represents the death of certain massive stars. Chandrasekhar used quantum mechanics and the notion of a degenerate electron gas to obtain the maximum mass of a white dwarf. A degenerate neutron gas produced enough pressure to stop the gravitational collapse of a massive star, producing a neutron star or pulsar. For a massive-enough star, the degenerate neutron gas fails to prevent gravitational collapse into a black hole. Supernovae explosions and implosions produce a neutron star or black hole as remnants. Oppenheimer and Volkoff used general relativity to derive the maximum mass of a star that would produce a black hole. Wheeler conceived of a “hairless black hole” in which only the mass, charge, and angular momentum determined the properties of the black hole.