Engineer Babar

A 35-mile rift in the desert of Ethiopia will likely become a new ocean eventually, researchers now confirm.
The crack, 20 feet wide in spots, opened in 2005 and 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 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 ocean 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 Institute of Technology, and from Yemen with the help of Jamal Sholan of the National Yemen Seismological Observatory Center.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/...reateanewocean

Done_Fishin

Thanks for sharing, shame we have to wait so long to see if they are right

sandman55

Interesting

T J Belfiore

I totally thought this thread was about drugs... ???

I won't be around when it finally forms.. I don't think. Interesting though.

Zealex

Maybe my great great great greatx20 kids will get to see it! Interesting.

Done_Fishin

Tell them to send you a postcard ..

WereBo

Now THAT'S the sort of thing I wish I had a functional time-machine for

Tumbleweed36

You haven't been talking to Al Gore about all this stuff, have you?

Engineer Babar

Done_Fishin

it's a play on words .. crack is a type of illegal substance or drug apart from quite a few other things.

One other use was made in a comedy with the remark "more crack than Harlem" but it wasn't drugs related!!

MichaelTech

How long ago did the original land mass begin to separate into the continents we now have? It is probably time for another upheaval of the planet in it's ever forming stages.
As we progress, we lose sight of the inherant geological conditions that make this planet.
I dont doubt that even the US, Canada, South America,or Europe, will eventually split apart. Im in california. How long untill it splits down the middle from the San Andreas fault? Will it create another island? Im buying land in San Bernardino, beach front property!

afccarl666

Apparently, according to my Geography teacher, it will make a new island in about...100,000 to a million years time Better get the bubbly on ice

I wonder if cryogenic freezing would let me see the ocean form. That would be worth waiting to see