Question 1

True or false: The Chandrasekhar limit is about 1.4 times the mass of the Sun.

Accepted Answer

True. This limit defines the maximum mass of a stable white dwarf star, around 1.4 solar masses, beyond which it collapses into a neutron star.

Question 2

True or false: Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was awarded the Nobel Prize jointly with Stephen Hawking.

Accepted Answer

False. Chandrasekhar shared the 1983 Nobel with William Fowler. Hawking never won a Nobel for his black hole work.

Question 3

True or false: Chandrasekhar won the Nobel Prize for his work on black holes.

Accepted Answer

False. He won the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics for theoretical studies of stellar structure and evolution, not specifically for black holes.

Question 4

True or false: Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar derived the Chandrasekhar limit while still a teenager.

Accepted Answer

True. Chandrasekhar developed the concept of the maximum white dwarf mass during a sea voyage from India to England in 1930 at age 19.

Question 5

True or false: Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar published his first scientific paper at the age of 19.

Accepted Answer

True. His first paper, 'The Compton Scattering and the New Statistics', was published in 1929 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society while he was 19 and an undergraduate at Presidency College, Madras.

Question 6

True or false: Chandrasekhar's work was initially ridiculed by Arthur Eddington.

Accepted Answer

True. At a 1935 meeting, Eddington publicly mocked Chandrasekhar's limit, leading to a famous rift and delaying acceptance of his theory.

Question 7

True or false: Chandrasekhar's uncle was the Nobel-winning physicist C. V. Raman.

Accepted Answer

True. Sir C. V. Raman, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930, was Chandrasekhar's maternal uncle, a fact often overlooked.

Question 8

True or false: Chandrasekhar was the first to propose that neutron stars exist.

Accepted Answer

False. Neutron stars were first proposed by Walter Baade and Fritz Zwicky in 1934. Chandrasekhar focused on white dwarfs and later black holes.

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Trivia Questions