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A major rift that opened in northeastern Ethiopia in 2005 seems to herald the continent’s first rupture since the evolution of modern humans, triggering volcanoes, land floods, and
A major rift that opened in northeastern Ethiopia in 2005 seems to herald the continent’s first rupture since the evolution of modern humans, triggering volcanoes, land floods, and seawater runoff.
For several days in September 2005 – amid a series of volcanic eruptions and hundreds of earthquakes – the land in northeastern Ethiopia split open. A bubble of molten rock over millions of years has seeped under Earth in the Afar Depression, an inhospitable desert where summer temperatures can reach 120 degrees Celsius. It eventually surfaced, splitting the ground in two, and creating a crack about 40 miles long and 25 feet wide.
“We’ve never seen anything like it,” he says. Popular Mechanics Cynthia Ebinger, a geologist at Tulane University. “This happens regularly on the seafloor, but this was the first known example on land.”
View along the active Buffalo Hararo Rift to Dabbahu Volcano in Afar, Ethiopia DavidMPyle // Wikimedia Commons
The Dabbahu Fissure, as it was known in 2005, is not the first geological event to rock the remote Afar region, with geysers, gaseous springs, hot springs, volcanoes and one of the few lava lakes in the region. World. A mecca for world scientists, the Afar triple junction is located in the Y-shaped cradle of the Arabian, Nubian and Somali plates. At the rate your fingernail grows, these plates move away from each other, and processes beneath them generate excess heat and energy that causes the region’s unique geophysical features.
Among these features, Dabbahu crack is the star of the show today. Scientists now suspect that the first continental breakup since Pangea will occur along this rift, allowing Africa in about a few million years to span two continents, starting Earth’s newest ocean.
What is the East African Rift System?
One of the world’s greatest geological wonders, the Northeast African Rift System (or EARS) is actually a network of rifts and valleys caused by cracks in the Earth’s crust. EARS has been forming for about 25 million years and consists of two branches: The East Rift Valley stretches from Jordan to the coast of Mozambique. Meanwhile, the Western Rift Valley stretches from Uganda to Mozambique and contains some of the deepest lakes in the world.
But of all the lands in the hustle and bustle of EARS, the Afar Basin is the most extreme, with the highest magma production and the most active volcanoes in the region. Over time, a magma mantle cloud formed below the depression, pushing hot rocks to the surface, similar to oil globules rising in a lava lamp. Eventually, extreme pressure forced magma to push into the cracks between these rocks and ruptured the Dabbahu fissure in 2005.
According to Ebinger, the pressure was so strong that the plates were separated by 25 feet, reaching a gap of 400 years in a matter of days. It was such a large number that one of the scientists who used satellite data to measure the new crack was sure he had miscalculated.
A few weeks after the 2005 incident, Ebinger was on a plane bound for Ethiopia, where he was working with scientists from around the world to land the geophysical instruments as soon as possible. The team quickly realized that the plates underlying the region were moving much faster than normal due to the volume of magma below the surface.
In the next five years, Ebinger says, there are 13 more events similar to the 2005 breakout, but less severe. Today the plates slowed down to normal speed.
Looking ahead, Ebinger predicts there will be more such dramatic events, perhaps every 50 or 100 years. As the land splits, the Afar Trench will sink deeper, a process known as seafloor spreading. “If you fast forward about 500,000 years, the Afar Depression could drop below sea level and be submerged.”
The New Sea may or may not completely split the continent in two. “As you move south, the rate of separation decreases,” says Ebinger. “So it might just be a bit of seawater coming in.”
Panoramic view of Abijatta Shalla Lake National Park in Great Rift Valley, Ethiopia Getty Pictures
Not all continental rifts turn into oceans, and the East African Rift is still likely to collapse. Actually scientists He discovered areas of molten rock miles from the crack in the Earth’s crust; This is a discovery that contradicts conventional geological thinking that all fracturing activity must occur within the crevice itself.
Dabbahu crack may go its way mid continental rift A 1,800-mile rainbow-shaped vein of North America (MCR) that ruptured more than a billion years ago. Stretching from present-day Detroit to central Kansas, the fault produced more than 240,000 cubic miles of igneous rock over 30 million years before suddenly and mysteriously stopping its spread. There are many theories about this, but the MRC remains the deepest rift ever discovered that did not become an ocean. Maybe Dabbahu’s crack will follow in his footsteps. In many ways, only time will tell. Source
Source: Port Altele
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