A limit set in 1930 may have a magnetic loophole, Bengaluru simulations suggest

Since 1930, astrophysicists have treated about 1.4 solar masses as the ceiling for a white dwarf — the dense ember of a dead star — beyond which it must collapse or explode. Ph.D. student Zenia Zuraiq and Professor Banibrata Mukhopadhyay at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, working with collaborators, simulated a star's full life and found that a strongly magnetic white dwarf feeding from a companion star could be supported at up to about 2.4 times the Sun's mass. Published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the result could explain unusually bright Type Ia supernovae — the very explosions astronomers use as measuring sticks for the expanding universe.