Chandrasekhar showed that above a limiting mass, white dwarf stars will collapse under their own gravitational force. We use dimensional analysis to show that although the limiting mass is finite in three spatial dimensions (d=3), it is zero in higher spatial dimensions. A star placed in a high‐dimensional space is unstable and will either collapse to a black hole or disperse and become unbound. Thus, any universe—or part of a universe—with d≥4 will be profoundly different from one with d=3.
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© 1993 American Association of Physics Teachers.
1993
American Association of Physics Teachers
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