Reference Terms
from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gas giant
A gas giant is a large planet that is not primarily composed of rock or other solid matter. 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 gases hydrogen and helium, with traces of water, methane, ammonia, and other hydrogen compounds. Unlike rocky planets, which have a clearly defined difference between atmosphere and surface, 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. One cannot "land on" such planets in the traditional sense. There are four gas giants in our solar system: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
Related Stories
1
2
Space & Time News
March 12, 2026
Feb. 24, 2026 Scientists have proposed a surprising connection between solar flares and earthquakes. When solar activity disturbs the ionosphere, it may generate electric fields that penetrate fragile fracture zones in Earth’s crust. If a fault is already ...
Feb. 2, 2026 NASA’s Perseverance rover has just made history by driving across Mars using routes planned by artificial intelligence instead of human operators. A vision-capable AI analyzed the same images and terrain data normally used by rover planners, ...
Feb. 2, 2026 Hidden lava tunnels on the Moon and Mars could one day shelter human explorers, offering natural protection from radiation and space debris. A European research team has unveiled a bold new mission concept that uses three different robots working ...
Jan. 28, 2026 Low-Earth orbit is more crowded—and fragile—than it looks. Satellites constantly weave past each other, burning fuel and making dozens of evasive maneuvers every year just to stay safe. A major solar storm could disable navigation and ...
Jan. 19, 2026 Physicists have unveiled a new way to simulate a mysterious form of dark matter that can collide with itself but not with normal matter. This self-interacting dark matter may trigger a dramatic collapse inside dark matter halos, heating and ...
Jan. 18, 2026 When scientists sent bacteria-infecting viruses to the International Space Station, the microbes did not behave the same way they do on Earth. In microgravity, infections still occurred, but both viruses and bacteria evolved differently over time. ...
Jan. 8, 2026 A team of physicists has discovered a surprisingly simple way to build nuclear clocks using tiny amounts of rare thorium. By electroplating thorium onto steel, they achieved the same results as years of work with delicate crystals — but far more ...
Jan. 8, 2026 Nearly everything in the universe is made of mysterious dark matter and dark energy, yet we can’t see either of them directly. Scientists are developing detectors so sensitive they can spot particle interactions that might occur once in years or ...
Jan. 6, 2026 A distant pulsar’s radio signal flickers as it passes through space, much like stars twinkle in Earth’s atmosphere. By monitoring this effect for 10 months, researchers watched the pattern slowly evolve as gas, Earth, and the pulsar all moved. ...
Jan. 6, 2026 Mars looks familiar from afar, but surviving there means creating a protective oasis in a hostile world. Instead of shipping construction materials from Earth, researchers are exploring how to use Martian soil as the raw ingredient. Two tough ...
Jan. 2, 2026 A physicist has proposed a bold experiment that could allow gravitational waves to be manipulated using laser light. By transferring minute amounts of energy between light and gravity, the ...
Dec. 31, 2025 As we age, our immune system quietly loses its edge, and scientists have uncovered a surprising reason why. A protein called platelet factor 4 naturally declines over time, allowing blood stem cells to multiply too freely and drift toward unhealthy, ...
Latest Headlines
updated 12:56 pm ET
Mar. 12, 2026 Scientists have grown chickpeas in simulated moon soil, offering a promising step toward farming on the lunar surface. Researchers mixed moon-like regolith with worm-produced compost and helpful ...
Mar. 11, 2026 Astronomers have caught what may be a rare cosmic catastrophe unfolding 11,000 light-years away. A seemingly ordinary sun-like star suddenly began flickering wildly, puzzling scientists until they ...
Mar. 11, 2026 Astronomers have discovered a strange new signal coming from an exploding star — a “chirp” that speeds up over time, similar to the signals seen when black holes collide. The unusual pattern ...
Mar. 10, 2026 Scientists studying Mars may have uncovered a brand-new mineral hidden in the planet’s ancient sulfate deposits. By combining laboratory experiments with orbital data, researchers identified an ...
Mar. 10, 2026 Cosmic voids may seem like the emptiest places in the universe, stripped of matter, radiation, and even dark matter. But they’re far from nothing. Even in these vast empty regions, the fundamental ...
Mar. 9, 2026 When NASA’s DART spacecraft deliberately crashed into the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, it did more than change the asteroid’s local orbit — it slightly shifted the path of the entire asteroid ...
Mar. 9, 2026 Astronomers have created the largest and most detailed 3D map yet of a glowing signal from the early universe, revealing hidden galaxies and gas from ...
Mar. 9, 2026 Physicists have long struggled to unite quantum mechanics—the theory governing tiny particles—with Einstein’s theory of gravity, which explains the behavior of stars, planets, and the structure ...
Mar. 8, 2026 Asteroids with tiny moons may be quietly trading material across space. Images from NASA’s DART mission revealed faint streaks on the moon ...
Mar. 6, 2026 For decades, astronomers wondered why most nearby galaxies are speeding away from the Milky Way instead of being pulled in by its gravity. New simulations reveal the answer: our galaxy sits in a ...