Red Giant: [updated]

As the core contracts under gravity, it becomes degenerate—a strange quantum state where pressure no longer depends on temperature. The core heats up to over 100 million Kelvin, eventually becoming hot enough to fuse helium into carbon via the triple-alpha process (three helium nuclei fusing into one carbon nucleus).

When we look up at the night sky, most of the stars we see—including our own Sun—spend the majority of their lives in a quiet, stable phase. Astronomers call this the "main sequence." During this time, stars fuse hydrogen into helium in their cores, generating the outward pressure that prevents them from collapsing under their own gravity. Red Giant

For 90% of its life, a star fuses hydrogen into helium at its core. The outward force of fusion perfectly balances the inward crush of gravity. This equilibrium maintains a stable size and temperature. As the core contracts under gravity, it becomes

: A red giant can expand to hundreds of times its original size, becoming luminous enough to engulf nearby planets like Mercury and Venus. Astronomers call this the "main sequence

But the red giant was making that letter harder to send. Gravitational waves from Helios’s convulsions were distorting space-time, interfering with the quantum relays that beamed the Archive toward the nearest exoplanets. Each day, more data was lost.