In 1931, the astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar theorised that a star would not form a stable white dwarf at the end of its life if its mass was greater than 1.44 times the solar mass (1.44 Ms). This is known as the Chandrasekhar limit, above which the white dwarf will explode as what is called a “Type 1a supernova”. This work fetched Chandrasekhar the Nobel Prize in 1983.