A white dwarf is the cooling core of a Sun-like star. Its fate hinges on mass: there's a strict Chandrasekhar limit (about 1.4 solar masses) beyond which the star collapses further. In this work, the scientists built a model of a cold carbon white dwarf and added a tiny correction from loop quantum gravity — a theory where space itself is made of discrete "atoms."
The big surprise came from the parameter controlling the amplitude of the quantum correction. As they increased it, the massive part of the equilibrium sequence shifted upward, and the limiting mass grew — from 1.39 to 1.69–1.71 solar masses. Meanwhile, the matter inside the star didn't get stiffer: only the geometry in which it exists changed.
The second parameter — the asymmetry between two geometry masses — affected the shape of the metric near the transition region but had almost no impact on the main observable quantities: the maximum mass changed by less than 0.1%, and the radius by less than 0.33%. The calculation clearly separated the roles: one parameter shifts mass and radius beyond the classical limit, while the other only introduces a subtle asymmetry in the low-compactness region. And that's exactly where white dwarfs live.
The Chandrasekhar limit for a white dwarf is about 1.4 solar masses — that's roughly 2.8 nonillion (2.8×10²⁷) tons. A single teaspoon of white dwarf matter would weigh several tons on Earth.