Scientists May Have Just Figured Out When the First Continents Formed in the Universe

Amaze Lab

Our planet is made up of several continents that have moved and shifted over our planet's billions of years of existence. But what about the rest of the Universe? Why are they so important and when did the first ever continent arise out of nowhere?

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00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:04 Our planet's land masses are made up

00:05 of several continents that have moved and shifted

00:08 over our planet's billions of years of existence.

00:11 But what about the rest of the universe?

00:13 Why are continents so important?

00:14 And when did the first continent arise out of nowhere?

00:17 Well, researchers at the School of Physics and Astronomy

00:20 at Cardiff University in Wales may have figured that out,

00:23 all in the name of finding life on other planets.

00:26 It turns out continents and plate tectonics

00:28 are crucial for the core of our planet to get rid of heat,

00:31 a process that is critical for maintaining the planet's

00:33 magnetosphere, or the protective barrier that

00:36 prevents the sun from literally cooking everything

00:38 on the planet.

00:39 So biasing our search for life towards planets

00:41 with continents could be a better way

00:43 to increase our chances of finding life in the cosmos.

00:45 Planets are made of the same stuff as stars,

00:47 the accreted dust and other material of solar nebulas.

00:51 So by looking at thick and thin-disk stars,

00:53 thin being younger and thick being older,

00:55 and cross-referencing the data in those systems

00:57 with our own, the researchers may

00:59 have narrowed down a continental formation timeline,

01:01 finding that the first continents likely

01:03 formed around 2 billion years before our own

01:05 on younger thin-disk stars.

01:07 But in older systems, continental formations

01:09 have been around for 4 to 5 billion years longer than ours,

01:12 or formed as early as 8 billion years ago.

01:16 [MUSIC PLAYING]

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