Gas Giant

From Traveller Wiki - Science-Fiction Adventure in the Far future

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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