A researcher has figured out that the Earth’s first continent was formed 3bn years ago, in a new paper that sheds fresh light on the early stages of the planet’s life. Jane Greaves, an astronomy professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy at Cardiff University in Wales, was examining continent formation on distant stars and planets. It is thought that exoplanets with continents that formed in a similar way to Earth’s are more likely to be habitable, and perhaps even contain alien life. In the process, she calculated when several distant planets’ continents were born, as well as those a little closer to home. Continents on Earth sit on top of the planet’s hot, viscous mantle. Heat from the inner core stops the mantle from solidifying. The reason the core is hot is because it contains radioactive elements that came from neutron star collisions billions of years ago such as forms of Uranium, Thorium and Potassium. By analysing how many materials like this are present on Earth and on other planets, we are also able to estimate when the continents formed. On Earth, that was about 9.5 billion years since the beginning of the universe. Meanwhile, in Greaves' sample, the first continents appeared 2bn years before Earth’s on the exoplanets of younger, so-called thin disk stars. Older, thick disk stars analysed in her work produced rocky planets with continents that appeared even earlier: about 4 to 5bn years before Earth’s. “The outlook seems very promising for finding rocky exoplanets with continents, given that nearby Sun-like stars have already produced a few candidate hosts,” she wrote. The study, “When were the First Exocontinents?” is published in Research Notes of the American Astronomical SocietySign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

The Modern Warfare II and Warzone Season 4 roadmap reveals seven new Multiplayer maps, as well as Vondel, a new map coming to Resurgence, DMZ, and Battle Royale.

Switzerland’s formerly cash-obsessed citizens are falling out of love with physical money. Some 36% of consumer transactions were

NAPERVILLE, Ill.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 22, 2023--

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The online gaming world has a new obsession, with a game called Only Up where you simply have to keep climbing up a series of random objects until you reach space. The game sounds relatively straightforward as anyone who has even the most basic concept of videogames knows how to climb up various structures. However, Only Up does not make the game easy for players as the seemingly infinite amount of objects range from pipes, bridges and trampolines but even the slightest of mistakes can end in disaster sending the players plummeting all the way back to the start of the game. Only Up was developed by SCKR Games and released in May 2023. It is available to play on Steam for the price of £8.50 ($10.80). Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter The game has gone viral thanks to high-profile streamers such as Adin Ross, Hasan Piker and iShowSpeed playing the game on their respective streams. iShowSpeed, who has 17 million followers on YouTube, attempts to play the game have proved to be particularly entertaining. At one point he lost 8 hours of progress. Thankfully, while playing the game on Tuesday the 18-year-old was able to complete the game in just under 5 hours. The most impressive run on the game so far has come from streamer Shade managed to find a glitch which allowed him to complete it in just 33 seconds. Whether you want to complete the game properly or use the glitch is your call but have fun regardless. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

CAMBRIDGE, England--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug 23, 2023--

By Francois Murphy VIENNA The U.N. nuclear watchdog has re-installed only some monitoring equipment originally put in place

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By Joey Roulette (Reuters) -The chief executive officer of Jeff Bezos's space company Blue Origin, Bob Smith, will step down

Breeze is coming back to Valorant on Tuesday, Aug. 29 in Episode 7 Act 2 as Fracture and Pearl leave the map rotation.

‘Lyrically Correct’ is the ultimate music trivia game for hip-hop and R&B lovers.