Astrophysics (Index) | About |
The term supermassive star is used for a (discovered or theorized) star more massive than stars normally form. Stellar mass according to both (established) theory and observation generally tops out somewhere between 50 and 150 solar mass, with some dependence upon metallicity. This is for the metallicity-range of today's stars, and the first stars (Population III), which had basically no metallicity, have been theorized to be such supermassive stars. Some other theorized exotic stars may fit the description. One theory proposes that supermassive stars of some type may have been the seeds of the early SMBH formation that produced observed quasars.