Stellar Evolution
The list only gives the inferred current masses of stars, not previous masses. A number of these and other stars may have started out with even greater masses than the listed current estimates, but have probably lost many tens of solar masses of material due to the huge amount of gas they outflow, and sub-supernova and supernova impostor explosion events.
Also there are a number of supernovae and hypernovae remnants whose precursor stars' masses can be estimated based on pre-super/hypernova observations and the energy and type of explosion. These stars would have easily appeared in this list, had they survived.
Read more about this topic: List Of Most Massive Stars
Famous quotes containing the word evolution:
“By contrast with history, evolution is an unconscious process. Another, and perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say that evolution is a natural process, history a human one.... Insofar as we treat man as a part of nature—for instance in a biological survey of evolution—we are precisely not treating him as a historical being. As a historically developing being, he is set over against nature, both as a knower and as a doer.”
—Owen Barfield (b. 1898)