Multithreading is an important feature of Java that allows a program to execute two or more tasks concurrently within a single program. A thread is a lightweight, independent path of execution within a process. In Java, multithreading is mainly used to perform multiple operations at the same time, improve CPU utilization, make applications more responsive, and efficiently handle tasks such as file operations, network communication, animations, and background processing. A Java program normally starts with the main thread, which executes the `main()` method. Additional threads can be created whenever a program needs to perform other tasks concurrently. Each thread has its own execution path, but threads belonging to the same process share common resources such as memory and objects. Because of this shared memory, threads can communicate efficiently, but proper synchronization is required when multiple threads access shared data. Java provides built-in support for multithreading through the `Thread` class, the `Runnable` interface, and other concurrency features. The two basic approaches for creating a thread are extending the `Thread` class and implementing the `Runnable` interface. The life cycle of a thread represents the different states through which a thread passes from its creation to its termination. In Java, the important thread states defined by the `Thread.State` enumeration are NEW, RUNNABLE, BLOCKED, WAITING, TIMED_WAITING, and TERMINATED. A neat representation of the thread life cycle is: ```text start() +--------------------------+ | | v | +-------+ | | NEW | | +-------+ | | | | start() | v | +-------------+ | | RUNNABLE |<-----------------+ +-------------+ | | | | | | | +----> BLOCKED ------+ | | | +---------> WAITING ------+ | | | +-----> TIMED_WAITING ---+ | | run() completes v +-------------+ | TERMINATED | +-------------+ ``` The NEW state is the initial state of a thread. When a thread object is created using the `Thread` class, the thread is in the NEW state. At this point, the thread has been created but its execution