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The term gas giant was coined in 1952 by the science fiction writer James Blish [6] and was originally used to refer to all giant planets.It is, arguably, something of a misnomer because throughout most of the volume of all giant planets, the pressure is so high that matter is not in gaseous form. [7]
Sudarsky's classification of gas giants for the purpose of predicting their appearance based on their temperature was outlined by David Sudarsky and colleagues in the paper Albedo and Reflection Spectra of Extrasolar Giant Planets [1] and expanded on in Theoretical Spectra and Atmospheres of Extrasolar Giant Planets, [2] published before any successful direct or indirect observation of an ...
A giant planet, sometimes referred to as a jovian planet (Jove being another name for the Roman god Jupiter), is a diverse type of planet much larger than Earth. Giant planets are usually primarily composed of low- boiling point materials ( volatiles ), rather than rock or other solid matter, but massive solid planets can also exist.
The planet is what’s known as a gas giant, which means it doesn’t have a solid surface — though it may have a solid core about the size of the Earth. ... This planet has a radius 2.5 times ...
According to the IAU's explicit count, there are eight planets in the Solar System; four terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars) and four giant planets, which can be divided further into two gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn) and two ice giants (Uranus and Neptune). When excluding the Sun, the four giant planets account for more than ...
[3] [4] [5] Gas giant cores are proportionally much smaller than those of terrestrial planets, though they can be considerably larger than the Earth's nevertheless; Jupiter's is 10–30 times heavier than Earth, [5] and exoplanet HD149026 b may have a core 100 times the mass of the Earth. [6]
Giant planet: A massive planet. They are most commonly composed primarily of 'gas' (hydrogen and helium) or 'ices' (volatiles such as water, methane, and ammonia), but may also be composed primarily of rock, which would make one a Mega Earth. [3] Regardless of their bulk compositions, giant planets normally have thick atmospheres of hydrogen ...
These can be further subdivided into the gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn) and the ice giants (Uranus and Neptune) that have large icy cores. [26]: 26–27, 283–284 Most of our direct information on the composition of the giant planets is from spectroscopy. Since the 1930s, Jupiter was known to contain hydrogen, methane and ammonium.