The Tolman, Oppenheimer, Volkoff limit is like the maximum weight a giant ball of matter can have before it collapses into something super dense and weird.
Imagine you're stacking oranges in a big pile, the more oranges you add, the heavier the pile gets. But if you keep adding more and more, eventually the bottom oranges get squished so much that they start to merge together, making the whole pile shrink and become really hard. That’s kind of what happens with stars made mostly of neutrons, called neutron stars.
What Happens When They Get Too Heavy?
If a neutron star gets too heavy, like if it's as heavy as about 2 or 3 times our Sun, the pressure inside can't hold it up anymore. It starts to collapse in on itself, and that’s when it becomes something even more extreme: a black hole.
Think of it like a giant grapefruit turning into a tiny marble, all the stuff gets squeezed into a super small space, making gravity so strong nothing can escape from it, not even light!
So, the Tolman, Oppenheimer, Volkoff limit is just the "orange pile" rule for neutron stars.
Examples
- A star is like a giant ball of fire. When it runs out of fuel, it collapses. The Tolman, Oppenheimer, Volkoff limit is the point where it becomes so dense that it turns into a neutron star or even a black hole.
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See also
- How do black holes form and what happens at their event horizon?
- How Does The life cycle of a neutron star - David Lunney Work?
- How Do ‘Black Holes’ Swallow Everything and What Happens Inside Them?
- How Does a Black Hole Actually Work?
- What Happens to Light When It Falls into a Black Hole?