Do all stars evolve into red giants, then into white dwarfs and ultimately into black dwarfs?
The Conventional ten stages of evolution are applicable only to stars that have a mass of up to a certain critical limit.
What is the Chandrasekhar Limit?
The limit of mass beyond which a star will not become a red giant is called the Chandrasekhar Limit after the Nobel Prize winning India born U.S. astrophysicist who first propounded this theory. The Chandrasekhar Limit can vary between 1.2 to 1.4 times the mass of the Sun, depending on certain conditions.
What happens to a star that has a mass exceeding the Chandrasekhar Limit?
When a star with a mass exceeding the Chandrasekhar Limit exhausts its supply of hydrogen, the inward force due to its gravitation is so tremendous that it undergoes an immediate inward collapse followed by a sudden heating of the core, resulting in a cataclysmic explosion that blows the star apart and hurls the fragment far out into space. A star that undergoes such an explosion and disintegration is called a supernova. (Plural: supernovae).