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To bad the crack wasn't already there you could of said it was 4 billion years old.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,...est=latestnews
A 35-mile rift in the desert of Ethiopia will eventually become a new ocean or sea, researchers now confirm.
The crack, 20 feet wide in spots, opened in 2005. Some geologists believed then that it would spawn a new ocean. But that view was controversial, and the rift had not been well studied.
A new study involving an international team of scientists and reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters finds the processes creating the rift are nearly identical to what goes on at the bottom of oceans, further indication a new sea is in the region's future.
The same rift activity is slowly parting the Red Sea, too.
Using newly gathered seismic data from 2005, researchers reconstructed the event to show the rift tore open along its entire 35-mile length in just days. Dabbahu, a volcano at the northern end of the rift, erupted first, then magma pushed up through the middle of the rift area and began "unzipping" the rift in both directions, the researchers explained in a statement today.
"We know that seafloor ridges are created by a similar intrusion of magma into a rift, but we never knew that a huge length of the ridge could break open at once like this," said Cindy Ebinger, professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Rochester and co-author of the study.
The result shows that highly active volcanic boundaries along the edges of tectonic ocean plates may suddenly break apart in large sections, instead of in bits, as the leading theory held. And such sudden large-scale events on land pose a much more serious hazard to populations living near the rift than would several smaller events, Ebinger said.
"The whole point of this study is to learn whether what is happening in Ethiopia is like what is happening at the bottom of the ocean where it's almost impossible for us to go," says Ebinger. "We knew that if we could establish that, then Ethiopia would essentially be a unique and superb ocean-ridge laboratory for us. Because of the unprecedented cross-border collaboration behind this research, we now know that the answer is yes, it is analogous."
The African and Arabian plates meet in the remote Afar desert of Northern Ethiopia and have been spreading apart in a rifting process — at a speed of less than 1 inch per year — for the past 30 million years. This rifting formed the 186-mile Afar depression and the Red Sea. The thinking is that the Red Sea will eventually pour into the new sea in a million years or so. The new body of water would connect to the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, an arm of the Arabian Sea between Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula and Somalia in eastern Africa.
Atalay Ayele, professor at the Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia, led the investigation, gathering seismic data with help from neighboring Eritrea and Ghebrebrhan Ogubazghi, professor at the Eritrea Ins ute of Technology, and from Yemen with the help of Jamal Sholan of the National Yemen Seismological Observatory Center.
To bad the crack wasn't already there you could of said it was 4 billion years old.
I think you meant "Too bad...", but that's okay.
Is it as big as boutons yet?
On first read I thought the le read "Giant Crack in Africa will Become New Orleans" and I was bracing for some Katrina jokes.
Anybody know any good ones? It's been so long since I had a girlfriend from there and I'm out of practice.
its a conspiracy
crack?
Old news, and not doing anything in our lifetimes.
well this planet is only 5,000 years old it's still new and forming
will this throw a monkey wrench in al gore's rising coastline "theory"?
Funny how a Monkey Wrench evolved from a Ford Wrench....
this just in, the world is round
why the are we posting old ass discoveries
Sea of Aids.
I tried not to judge you from the photo I saw of you in the other topic where you looked like a tool, but after reading your spelling smack in this topic I must say my first impression was correct.
Those are two of the most amazing non-sequitur posts I've ever seen! Way to make absolutely no ing sense at all, fellas.
Well duh!
Kinda like two Evolutionist talking?Those are two of the most amazing non-sequitur posts I've ever seen! Way to make absolutely no ing sense at all, fellas.
You do realize that if an ocean does form there its simply replacing parts of the Indian ocean where land will be moving too? No new water is being created, the land is just moving.
Science is hard.
africa is like califonia, the world will be a lot better if it fell into the ocean
Giant crack?
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