The Chameleon Particles: How Neutrino Identity Swaps Might Rewrite the Physics of Dying Stars
Executive Overview For decades, the foundational paradigm of core-collapse supernovae has remained largely unaltered in astrophysics textbooks. When a massive star exhausts the nuclear fuel at its core, it begins synthesizing progressively heavier elements through endothermic, or energy-consuming, reactions. Stripped of the outward radiation pressure that previously stabilized it against the crushing pull of its…
