New Zealand plans to build three tunnels under Auckland’s Waitemata Harbour to ease traffic congestion in its largest

More than 840,000 Afghans and their families who applied for a resettlement program aimed at people who helped the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan are still there waiting

China’s relaxation of natural gas price controls will benefit local utilities and may help spur demand for seaborne

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.

Officials say the Australian army helicopter that crashed during a multinational exercise hit the water with a “catastrophic impact” and there is no chance its four crew members survived

As rainfall arrives to coastal Massachusetts and Maine on Saturday, Hurricane Lee also threatens to bring damaging winds to parts of southeastern New England and Atlantic Canada.

'I was actually a healthy person but what was truly unhealthy about me was the way I was thinking,' Gracie McGraw said

A Brooklyn man accused in a string of random shootings across New York City appeared before a judge by video Monday to formally face charges in the rampage that left one person dead and three others wounded, according to the Queens District Attorney's Office.

'Supernatural' co-stars Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki have sparked curiosity among fans regarding their heights and personalities

Andrew Tate faces backlash after he criticized liberals on platform 'X' for their stance on the Israel-Hamas conflict

A recent collaboration between Andrew Tate, Adin Ross, Elon Musk, and Kanye West sparked an alien envoy debate on Twitter

Authorities say former NFL player Sergio Brown has been arrested in Southern California nearly a month after the body of his 73-year-old mother was found behind her suburban Chicago home