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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.
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