The earth is literally splitting VIDEO

The earth is literally splitting VIDEO

Africa is breaking up or “rifting” into two parts and a new ocean is being born, scientists have said.

This opens the way for a whole new ocean to pass through that gap, writes Blic.

So, countries like Zambia and Uganda could one day have their own coastlines if the landmass continues to separate.

According to the respected journal "Geophysical Research Letters", geologists have been able to confirm that a new ocean is being created as the African continent splits in half.

Scientists have managed to find the exact place where, very deep underground, a continent with an area of over 30 million square kilometers opened for the first time, writes Unilad.com.

The splitting up of the continent is linked to East African Rift, a 56 kilometres or 35-mile-long crack that emerged in Ethiopia’s desert in 2005. This will set off the formation of a new sea.

The fissure is located at the boundaries of three tectonic plates that have been gradually moving away from each other for some time. Geologists have indicated that this complex tectonic process will make way for an entirely new body of water millions of years from now.

Scientists have discovered that the rift, known as the East African Rift, is currently about 55 kilometers long after it first appeared in 2005, in the deserts of Ethiopia.

The East African Rift valley also known as the Afro-Arabian Rift Valley, is one of the most extensive rifts on Earth's surface, extending from Jordan in southwestern Asia southward through eastern Africa to Mozambique. “This is the only place on Earth where you can study how a continental rift becomes an oceanic rift,” said Christopher Moore of the University of Leeds.

With the help of satellite radar technology, he monitored the volcanic activity of the East African region, which is most often associated with the gradual disintegration of the continent. The rift is located on the borders of the African, Arabian and Somali tectonic plates, and for the last 30 million years the Arabian plate has been slowly moving away from the African continent.

Additionally, the Somali Plate is also moving away from the African Plate – deepening its path through the Great Rift Valley. With the help of GPS instruments, the researchers were able to precisely measure these movements of the earth.

GPS tracking has revealed the different paces at which the land movements between these tectonic plates are occurring, with the Arabian plate shifting away from Africa at a rate of one inch per year.

"With GPS measurements, you can measure movement rates down to a few millimeters per year," said Ken McDonald, a marine geophysicist and professor at the University of California, San Francisco.

“As we get more and more measurements for GPS, we can get a much greater sense of what’s going on,” Ken Macdonald, a marine geophysicist and a professor emeritus at the University of California, said.

“The Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea will flood in over the Afar region and into the East African Rift Valley and become a new ocean, and that part of East Africa will become its own separate small continent”, McDonald pointed out.

The three tectonic plates are moving away from each other at different rates, but McDonald says the Arabian is separating from the African at a rate of 2.5cm per year.

The African and Somali plates are separating at an even slower rate, about five millimeters each year.

Spanning over 3,000km, the East African Rift Valley lies from the Gulf of Aden in the north towards Zimbabwe in the south. It divides the African plate into two parts: the Somali and Nubian plates.

The crack was discovered at the border of three tectonic plates – African Nubian, African Somali, and Arabian – that have already been separating for some time, report added.