ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit

Okay, imagine you have a big bag of marbles. Each marble is like a particle, or a tiny piece of matter. When you put all the marbles together, they make up something big and heavy, like a planet or a star.

Now, the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff Limit is a rule that says there's a limit to how much stuff you can pack into a star before it squishes itself too much and collapses under its own weight.

You see, stars are really massive things that make gravity, which pulls everything towards its center. But if you put too much stuff in a star, the gravity gets too strong, and the star will start to get smaller and smaller, until it becomes really tiny and really, really dense.

The Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff Limit is like a warning sign that tells us when a star is getting too dense and is about to collapse. Scientists use this limit to figure out the maximum amount of matter that a star can hold before it collapses, like a balloon that's too full of air.

So, in short, the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff Limit is a rule that helps us understand the amount of matter that can be stuffed into a star before it can't take it anymore and collapses under its own weight.