Glossary of Astronomical Terms/mass-luminosity law
The mass-luminosity law is a result of the physics that describes the state of a main sequence star. As such stars have a simpler physical state than others, we're able to create a relation between the star's luminosity with its mass in the relation of:
Note that this formula is in units of the sun's luminosity and the sun's mass. A star that is 10,000 times more luminous than the sun, has a mass of 13.895 solar masses.
One use of this relation, lead to the current dark matter mystery of today.