Ice giant in mass. In 1952, science fiction writer James Blish coined the term "gas giant" and it was used to refer to the large non-terrestrial planets of the Solar System. However, in the 1990s, the compositions of Uranus and Neptune were discovered to be significantly different from those of Jupiter and Saturn. They are primarily composed of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, constituting a separate type of giant planet altogether. Because during their formation Uranus and Neptune incorporated their material as either ices or gas trapped in water ice, the term "ice giant" came into use. Modelling the formation of
Ice giant the terrestrial and gas giants is relatively straightforward and uncontroversial. The terrestrial planets of the Solar System are widely understood to have formed through collisional accumulation of planetesimals within the protoplanetary disc. The gas giants—Jupiter, Saturn, and their extrasolar counterpart planets—are thought to have formed after solid cores around 10 Earth masses () formed through the same process, while accreting gaseous envelopes from the surrounding solar nebula over the course of a few to several million years (Ma), although alternative models of core formation based on pebble accretion have recently been proposed. Some extrasolar giant planets may instead have formed