Research shows a massive crack will split Africa one day
BY JUDITH KAYI AYIDOMON Researchers have concluded that one day the African continent will break into two, with a new ocean emerging between the two parts. The separation, according to a research paper published by Nature Communications, will occur along the 310-mile-long region spanning Kenya and Ethiopia known as Turkana Rift, which it exhibits characteristics […] The post Research shows a massive crack will split Africa one day first appeared on The African Magazine.
Black News 
BY JUDITH KAYI AYIDOMON
Researchers have concluded that one day the African continent will break into two, with a new ocean emerging between the two parts. The separation, according to a research paper published by Nature Communications, will occur along the 310-mile-long region spanning Kenya and Ethiopia known as Turkana Rift, which it exhibits characteristics of late-stage continental rifting.
Christian Rowan, a Ph.D. candidate at Columba University’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, explains that continental rifting happens when the Earth’s crust—the outermost layer that is rocky and hard—begins to extend, causing the crust to start to fracture and subside as it extends, then breaks.
The researchers says that Turkana is the only active rift on Earth that is showing “necking,” the term they use to describe the phase in which new ocean basins are formed. Rowan, who led the study, explains that all the processes of deformation, faulting, and sedimentation are localized in one area. The scientist says, “All of Eastern Africa, from Mozambique in the south all the way up to the north to the Afar, which is up in Ethiopia, is undergoing this process of continental rifting.” Despite not giving a specific timeline, he is adamant that the critical breakup stage of Turkana isn’t too far. The Afar region in the north, near the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, he says, is showing early versions of oceanic crust.
The post Research shows a massive crack will split Africa one day first appeared on The African Magazine.
