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Speculation: these objects may help explain why JWST is finding galaxies much further along in development than we expected early on in the universe.

Yes. There are a ton of factors at play, but the universe was quite a bit different early on. The cores would collapse into a black hole, but the star was still so big that the outer parts become a sort of cocoon around the black hole.

They aren’t really “stars” since the core (a black hole) isn’t doing fusion, but they would appear very star-like if you hung out near one.