Massive Stars in the GW Era

The discovery of gravitational waves has once again convinced us that our knowledge of the origin and evolution of massive stars is far from perfect. In particular, the mass of the very first BBH merger turned out to be unexpectedly large (~ 63 solar masses), as did the mass of the components (~ 35 and ~ 30 solar masses). Perhaps the most widely accepted explanation for this fact (and other massive mergers and merging components) today is based on the so-called hierarchical merger hypothesis, which is inconsistent with the observational data. There are other ideas, such as primordial black holes, which is slightly outside the classical Big Bang theory, but partially explains (made with the JWST) the discovery of luminous objects/galaxies beyond the previously accepted epoch in the direction of the Big Bang. I will try to explain the observational data in a new and provocative way.