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They are stars of 0.4 - 8 times the mass of the s O through K are believed to become red giants (or supergiants in the case of O and B stars). Very low mass stars are thought to be fully convective and thus may not accumulate an inert core of helium, and thus may exhaust all of their fuel without ever becoming red giants.[http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/phys230/lectures/planneb/planneb.html If the star is less than 2.57 solar masses, the addition of Helium to the core by shell hydrogen fusing will cause a Helium Flash —a rapid burst of helium fusing in the core, after which the star will commence a brief period of helium fusing before beginning ''another'' ascent of the red giant branch. Stars more massive than 2.5 solar masses enter the helium fusing phase of their lives much more smoothly. The core helium fusing phase of a star's life is called the Horizontal Branch in metal-poor stars, so named because these stars lie on a nearly horizontal line in the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram of many star clusters. Metal-rich helium-fusing stars do not lie on a horizontal branch, but instead lie in a clump (the Red Clump ) in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. Earth's Sun As Earth's Sun is of one solar mass, it is expected to become a red giant in about five billion years. It will become sufficiently large to engulf the current orbits of the Solar System 's inner Planet s, including Earth . However, the gravitational pull of the sun will have weakened by then due to its loss of mass, and it is possible (but unlikely) that Earth may escape to a wider orbit. Red giants in fiction
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