I’m sure we’ll see some emails from beachfront land speculators in Nigeria and Ethiopia soon.
On the serious side, University of Rochester researchers have found evidence that Earth, doing what it darn well pleases despite our protestations, is making a new ocean in the African desert.
African Desert Rift Confirmed as New Ocean in the Making
Geologists Show that Seafloor Dynamics Are at Work in Splitting African Continent
In 2005, a gigantic, 35-mile-long rift broke open the desert ground in Ethiopia. At the time, some geologists believed the rift was the beginning of a new ocean as two parts of the African continent pulled apart, but the claim was controversial.
Now, scientists from several countries have confirmed that the volcanic processes at work beneath the Ethiopian rift are nearly identical to those at the bottom of the world’s oceans, and the rift is indeed likely the beginning of a new sea.
The new study, published in the latest issue of Geophysical Research Letters, suggests that the highly active volcanic boundaries along the edges of tectonic ocean plates may suddenly break apart in large sections, instead of little by little as has been predominantly believed. In addition, such sudden large-scale events on land pose a much more serious hazard to populations living near the rift than would several smaller events, says Cindy Ebinger, professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Rochester and co-author of the study.
“This work is a breakthrough in our understanding of continental rifting leading to the creation of new ocean basins,” says Ken Macdonald, professor emeritus in the Department of Earth Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and who is not affiliated with the research. “For the first time they demonstrate that activity on one rift segment can trigger a major episode of magma injection and associated deformation on a neighboring segment. Careful study of the 2005 mega-dike intrusion and its aftermath will continue to provide extraordinary opportunities for learning about continental rifts and mid-ocean ridges.”
“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.”
Atalay Ayele, professor at the Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia, led the investigation, painstakingly gathering seismic data surrounding the 2005 event that led to the giant rift opening more than 20 feet in width in just days. Along with the seismic information from Ethiopia, Ayele combined data from neighboring Eritrea with the help of 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. The map he drew of when and where earthquakes happened in the region fit tremendously well with the more detailed analyses Ebinger has conducted in more recent years.
Ayele’s reconstruction of events showed that the rift did not open in a series of small earthquakes over an extended period of time, but tore open along its entire 35-mile length in just days. A volcano called Dabbahu 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, says Ebinger.
Since the 2005 event, Ebinger and her colleagues have installed seismometers and measured 12 similar—though dramatically less intense—events.
“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,” says Ebinger. She explains that since the areas where the seafloor is spreading are almost always situated under miles of ocean, it’s nearly impossible to monitor more than a small section of the ridge at once so there’s no way for geologists to know how much of the ridge may break open and spread at any one time. “Seafloor ridges are made up of sections, each of which can be hundreds of miles long. Because of this study, we now know that each one of those segments can tear open in a just a few days.”
Ebinger and her colleagues are continuing to monitor the area in Ethiopia to learn more about how the magma system beneath the rift evolves as the rift continues to grow.
Additional authors of the study include Derek Keir, Tim Wright, and Graham Stuart, professors of earth and environment at the University of Leeds, U.K.; Roger Buck, professor at the Earth Institute at Columbia University, N.Y.; and Eric Jacques, professor at the Institute de Physique du Globe de Paris, France.
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Adolfo Giurfa (16:57:00) : “In the animation you show it is said that the only place where marsupial exists is in Australia. Surprisingly there are marsupials where …Australia contacted South America. Here in Lima…we have a marsupial called Opossum (zarigueya) but there are also marsupials…at the Manu national park…”
Marsupials obviously are extraterrestrial in origin and come from the fourth planet.
Moses is not visible on the Google earth image.
As I write I am setting in my Den over a couple of miles or so of Columbia River Basalt
another Deccan-type event.I something like it happened now..
AGW would pale in comparason….
Xenu escapes!
(and Tom Cruise rejoices!)
Glad to see the interest in geology expressed above. This rifting event in Africa is NOT controversial in the field; this behavior has been seen many times before in the long history of the earth. Perhaps the most spectacular is evident on your globe. Take Africa and South America – they just seem to fit together, don’t they? Actually, they DID fit together once upon a time. Beginning in Jurassic time (if I recall correctly) something like this Ethiopian event was happening. It took a LONG time to complete, but by the Cretaceous the two pieces were speeding apart in something like world-record time.
Similar events broke the supercontinent Pangea into various pieces before that – Laurasia and Gondwana resulting. Gondwana then broke apart with India sent off to careen into Asia, creating the Himalayas; Antarctica zooming south to sit upon the pole; Australia to the east. Laurasia gave us North America and europe among other chunks.
An earlier event in North America started up then failed, this event marking the Keweenawan System of the Late Proterozoic Era (all those names; it just gets more and more confusing). This resulted in the massive basaltic lava flows of the Lake Superior basin, which cause the Mid-Continent Gravity High and the other one that runs down the other Great Lakes from Huron to Erie.
In many cases these rifting events have caused excellent conditions for the deposition of beds that generate and trap oil. Brazil is now exploring and finding huge reserves in the Atlantic Ocean (last I saw they’re claiming about 35 billion barrels, and the exploration continues). Similar finds presumably exist elsewhere off SA, Africa, and North America.
We really don’t know that much about our very dynamic earth. Just as, I suspect, we don’t know that much about our very dynamic climate (or that little ball of fire, Sol, in the sky).
However, plate tectonics IS a unifying theory of geology (at least since the Proterozoic, say, about 2 billion years ago). Before that, similar processes probably existed (rock density and expansion due to heating are driving forces of plate tectonics, and that has been with us since the creation of the universe). However, there was a lot more heat way back when; the creation of the earth’s core and far more radioactivity provided heat in abundance that may have made things far more chaotic than they are today. The planet is cooler inside, but it’s still very dynamic (I won’t say alive).
Just in passing on some comments above: 1) The Earth is not expanding. If anything it is bound to shrink a bit as it grows cooler (very far in the future). 2) “…I wonder if this big crack has split in two a single species population of say apes. If so each population will from now on evolve in isolation from the other and in a million years or so from now…” Yes one can see these things in the aftermath of the great Gondwana breakup. Still, it takes a while. 3) Something about this African rift being like the situation in California. No, in California we have a compressional event (Africa is tensional). Two pieces of continents are rubbing against each other, as they are propelled by the different plates they ride on. This tends to push rocks up, not to pull them apart and cause some chunks to fall down. A great example of this latter is the Great Basin (California to Colorado). The Basin and Range Province is one of extension, great chunks of earth sank down (grabens). The mountain ranges (horsts) didn’t. We once did a gravity survey across the Panamint Valley (next one west of Death Valley). The geophysicists figured that the basement (the original surface rocks, now covered by sediments derived by erosion from the Panamint and other mountains) had subsided 35,000 feet.
Remember, in geology, Time is the fourth dimension. Some things, like a volcanic eruption, can occur in a matter of hours. Others, like the splitting of continents and the formation of new ocean basin, take millions of years. Buy property with this in mind. 😉
So, do sea levels rise?
Or do land levels fall?
James F. Evans quotes: “Numerous individuals in geology have pointed to assumptions that have colored geology:
“Van Andel (1984) conceded that plate tectonics had serious flaws, and that the need for a growing number of ad hoc modifications cast doubt on its claim to be the ultimate unifying global theory. Lowman (1992a) argued that geology has largely become “a bland mixture of descriptive research and interpretive papers in which the interpretation is a facile cookbook application of plate-tectonics concepts … used as confidently as trigonometric functions” (p. 3). Lyttleton and Bondi (1992) held that the difficulties facing plate tectonics and the lack of study of alternative explanations for seemingly supportive evidence reduced the plausibility of the theory.”
Facts:
1) Benioff plans subduction zones exist: Earthquakes and associated volcanism and convergence can be measured.
2) Seafloor spreading has been demonstrated by Vine and Matthews (symetry of the remanent magnetic anomaly of oceanic crust along the rift axis) and divergence can be measured.
3) Tuzo Wilson has demonstrated the Transform faults (strike slip faults with linking other plate boundaries. The rate of slip can be measured.
So Plate Tectonics IS the unifying concept. Like any global concept it needed tweaking. In particular, one of the main objection geologists scorned geophysicists with was the observation that most mountain chains are festoned and show a ductile deformation of the lithosphere in clear conflict with the early, dogmatic view that only rigid plate boundaries i.e. no ductile deformation could produce earthquakes.
Well since then everyone has calmed down and research has shown plate boundaries to be complex structures, that lithosphere mehanical behaviour could also depend on the speed at which convergence or divergence occur and many other specific points have helped better understand mechanism, including modeling.
But there are fundamentals that are unlikely to change, just as in astronomy, the Earth still revolves around the Sun.
@ur momisugly 2SoonOld2LateSmart
The more advanced the animal, the longer the childhood.
(Well, at least that is my hope.)
I also wish to add that no one was poised to become a billionaire promoting plate tectonics. Those who used the concept and found oil and gas could have very well come up empty handed had the concept been flawed…
ahhhh. It’s a witto baby crack. coochy coochy coo!
I’m surprised nobody brought up this old chestnut yet.
Anthropogenic Continental Drift.
http://www.thepeoplescube.com/red/viewtopic.php?t=1668
Symbolism at it’s very best … just in time for Copenhagen a 35 mile trench opens up in Africa.
On the up-side we can now reduce the carbon footprint of all those climate crime dollars by using an armada of B52’s to dump them directly.
Could we continue that expansion animation to get a guess about the future layout? What new continent will exist when Africa splits?
BTW, lots of amusing posts in this.
Retired Engineer (12:37:34), says:
“The same will happen in California after the Big One.”
No. Not the same kind of tectonic margin. California is a transform margin and is headed north, not west.
Power Grab (13:21:59), asks:
“I’m wondering if there is a connection between the tsunami in December 2004 and the Ethiopian rift in January 2005…?”
No.
James F. Evans (14:10:50), claims:
“Interestingly enough, this rift is consistent with a controversial hypothesis that the Earth is expanding in diameter.”
Not even close. In what way does this give any credence to such a nonsensical claim. And what happens to solids as they cool, just in a general sense? That alone gives you your answer. What a silly thing for you to say because there is not a geologist worth their salt that would make the claim the diameter of the earth is increasing.
Hell_Is_Like_Newark (13:55:34) , asks:
“what are the chances of a massive flood basalt eruption (think formation of the Deccan traps)?”
Not likely. Flood basalts are linked to the initiation of new hot spots (e.g. Columbia river basalts in Washington are the flood basalts from Yellowstone)
Haha, the comment about Nigeria was funny, but just to be sure, Nigeria is on the opposite, Western side of Africa. So you shouldn’t believe e-mails from Nigeria that they have new oceans. 😉
I love the Al Gorge crack, because it works on so many levels, especially for such a fat man. To swallow, esp. greedily.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/gorge
There’s a big, active crack in Antarctica too, which given enough equipment, it would be possible to walk across. It is called the West Antarctic Rift, rather unimaginatively, I think.
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~mstuding/tam_map_large.html
I guess the Ross Sea ice shelves must be growing as the rift enlarges. Marie Byrd land is an active hotspot, so somewhere, beneath the ice, a tear in the ground like that near Afar could occur anytime, or has even already done so…
being a geologist, I must say a big “thanks” to Jim F and Antonio San for their very clean, simple and exaustive explanations on plate tectonics.
THANKS!!!!
This is way cool, but no surprise. I learned about the African Rift back in the ’70s (though the news in this article is the speed of a single rifting event…)
Take a look at Madagascar. Now look at the coast line of Mozambique.
Yup, split off some millions of years ago. India used to be down there too, long ago. Notice Madagascar is on a North East trajectory? Like India was… (though I think it is a bit more east… look out Thailand!…)
Now the rift zone is a bit further over under Africa, so we get, yes, The Great Rift Valley and Lake Victoria (and all the rift valley lake chain, really).
Basically follow the Nile from the root in the lakes along the borders of Tanzania, Kenya, etc. That is where Africa is “unzipping”; so in a few hundred million years or so there will be a new “Madagascar” like island just off shore from a slimmer Africa. It will hold what is now Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya… The only real question is will it be a set of small islands like Mozambique, or will it become a single larger chunk like India?
Decisions, decisions…
Oh, and per the “expanding earth” theory. That was one of the common theories back in the 1950’s. Always bugged me for one simple reason:
Matter is neither created nor destroyed.
For the earth to expand: From where does the added ‘stuff’ come? …
Until you can show a stargate in the planet core with stuff coming in through a worm hole, we’re not expanding… No “stuff” to do it with.
They’re going to need a heckuva lot of Polyfilla to mend that crack.
On a more serious note, I love seeing our planet in action. It puts of all the crackpot greenie demands into perspective.
Fools. Can’t you see it’s the constant application of automobile brakes to pavement surfaces in the US and Asia that’s pulling the skin of the Earth apart! Remember – you first heard it here.
Another little geologic/continental drift factoid for you.
The location of this rift used to be very close to the South Pole, 440 million years ago. It would have been under a few kilometres of glacier at the time.
I sometimes wonder about what happened to the convective divergence zone underlying the East Pacific Rise, after that feature got subducted. It certainly continues under the continent, in the Salton Basin, due to the fact that the apparent triple point is on land there. I use the term apparent, because perhaps it’s not a viable triple point. Perhaps the EPR is reforming, under North America. You know, the broad zone of extension that trends under the Mojave, the Great Basin, then on out toward Yellowstone. And beyond?
Where’s the extra stuff coming from? Continual bombardment by extra-terrestrial stuff, like asteroids, etc. We don’t have pieces breaking off and flying into outer space, so over the billions of years that particulate matter accumulates. Struck me as a simple enough explanation.
Retired Engineer,
It is not ther same as the California boundary. Etopia is on a rift and San Francisco is on a strike-slip fault.
Retired geologist