Giant star mass, when on the main sequence, was below approximately , it will never reach the central temperatures necessary to fuse helium. It will therefore remain a hydrogen-fusing red giant until it runs out of hydrogen, at which point it will become a helium white dwarf. According to stellar evolution theory, no star of such low mass can have evolved to that stage within the age of the Universe. In stars above about the core temperature eventually reaches 10 K and helium will begin to fuse to carbon and oxygen in the core by the triple-alpha process. When the core is
Gas giant 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. Other than solids in the core and the upper layers of the atmosphere, all matter is above the , where there is no distinction between liquids and gases. The term has nevertheless caught on, because planetary scientists typically use "rock", "gas", and "ice" as shorthands for classes of elements and compounds commonly found as planetary constituents, irrespective of what phase the