| PLANETARY CLASSIFICATION | |
| Gas Giant | |
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| Age: | 2-10 billion years |
| Diameter: | 50,000-140,000 km |
| Location: | cold |
| Surface: | gaseous |
| Atmosphere: | Various, often including fluorine, methane and ammonia |
| Evolution: | none |
A gas giant is a type of planet which is composed mainly of gases such as fluorine, methane and ammonia. The United Federation of Planets classifies such planets as class J, class 6, class 7, and class 9.
The planets are generally anywhere from 2 billion to 10 billion years old, and have a diameter of 50,000 km to 140,000 km. Often these planets have a solid rocky or metallic core. Gas giants are usually found in the cold zone of an ecosphere of a star system. (Star Trek: Star Charts)
as giants are made up of the same materials found in stars, however they are not large enough to sustain nuclear fusion and become stars. It has been demonstrated that if two gas giants collide, the large mass involved could become dense enough to begin a self-sustaining nuclear reaction - creating a new star in the process. (TNG episode: "Ship in a Bottle")
A gas giant was a type of planet that was primarily made up of gaseous layers. Most were made primarily of hydrogen and helium, with some methane; a rare few had oxygen-rich layers within their atmospheres which were capable of supporting a life zone. Gas giants usually had many moons due to their high mass and gravity, and some also possessed spectacular systems of planetary rings. Famous gas giants included Bespin, Endor, Taloraan, and Yavin Prime.
The Galactic Empire had classified gas giants based on a type gas giant that they could be compared to such as Bespin-class gas giants.[1]
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A large planet with an extensive atmosphere of hydrogen and hydrogen compounds. Starships fuel themselves by diving into this atmosphere and skimming hydrogen from this atmosphere. Jupiter, in the Terra system, is an example of a gas giant.
Gas giants may have a rocky or metallic core—in fact, such a core is thought to be required for a gas giant to form—but the majority of its mass is in the form of the gaseous hydrogen and helium, with traces of water, methane, ammonia, and other hydrogen compounds. Gas giants do not have a well-defined surface; their atmospheres simply become gradually denser toward the core, perhaps with liquid or liquid-like states in between. Thus, terms such as diameter, surface area, volume, surface temperature and surface density refer only to the outermost layer visible from space.
The Solomani sometimes refer to gas giants as a Jovian planet after the planet Jupiter in their home system.
The third digit of the "PBG" element of the Universal World Profile indicates how many gas giants are present within the star system.
| This article was copied or excerpted from the following copyrighted sources and used under license from Far Future Enterprises and by permission of the author. |
| – Supplement 8 Library Data (A-M) |
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This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Gas_Giant. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Traveller, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License. |
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