Can Black Hole Stars Explain the Origin of Supermassive Black Holes?

Black hole stars, also known as quasi-stars, are hypothesised to have formed in the early universe where primordial gas collapses to form a protostar of 1000 solar masses or more, whose core collapses into a black hole that continues to power the star by accreting infalling material. Such a star would have a lifetime of only about 7 million years, but the black hole may have grown to 10,000 solar masses by that time, and might have served as the seed for the supermassive black holes found at the centres of some galaxies.

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