r/AskScienceDiscussion • u/Upset_Implement_5947 • 1d ago

General Discussion Is Gravitational Collapse related to Binding or Potential Energy?

It is as the title suggests, I know that gravitational collapse such as stars going supernova happens when gravity pulls matter into itself.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_collapse

I was wondering, is gravitational collapse related to Gravitational Binding or Potential Energy?

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u/Ok-Film-7939 1d ago

They aren’t different things. The binding energy of a star, say, is the difference in potential energy between its current state and a completely unbound state (all matter infinitely far away from other matter).

A supernova happens when much of the stars mass collapses into the core - which liberates an immense amount of potential energy - and enough of that energy gets transferred to the rest of the star’s mass to exceed its binding energy.

Some goes squish and that pays for the rest to go boom.