The formation of a supernova

Astronomers did not know what causes a star to explode in a
super nova until the 1939, when Indian-born American astrophysicist
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910–1995) pieced together the sequence
of events leading up to a supernova. He also calculated a figure for the
mass of a star (known as Chandrasekhar’s limit) that would determine if
it would end up as a neutron star or a black hole.
Various theories have been proposed to explain the reasons a star
explodes outward while collapsing inward. One theory is that the explosion
is caused by a final burst of uncontrolled nuclear fusion. A more
recent theory is that the explosion is due to the ejection of a wave of
high-energy subatomic particles called neutrinos (electrically neutral
particles in the lepton family). The neutrino theory gained greater acceptance
following the 1987 supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud, our
galaxy’s closest companion. Just before the supernova came into view, a
surge of neutrinos was detected in laboratories around the world. This supernova,
called Supernova 1987A, was the first visible to the naked eye
since 1604.