Here a new continent is being formed

Long cracks open in the ground in several places in East Africa bear witness to what might happen in the long run:

A large part of the continent will separate from the rest and form a whole new continent or a giant island. The landmass takes all or parts of Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique with it.

As a result of the split, a new ocean is formed between the new continents as seawater from the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea flows in and fills the Rift Valley. Countries that currently do not have a coastline – such as Ethiopia and Uganda – have access to the sea.

Clear evidence of what is about to happen is a crack about 50 kilometers long in the Ethiopian desert, which revealed itself in 2005. In 2018, Kenya followed suit with a crack up to 15 meters deep and 20 meters wide.

slow process

Splitting occurs along East African Rift System A series of cracks over approximately 4,000 km. The rift is formed by the east-west expansion of the African Plate. The new continent is formed by what is called the Somali Plate. The remaining tectonic plate is called the Nubian plate.

Admittedly, this does not happen overnight. Right now, the two plates are separating from each other at a rate of just under a centimeter per year, and it will take millions of years before the split occurs and the ocean flows out. However, these are exciting prospects that will dramatically change the world map.

The rift system arose about 25 million years ago, in an area of ​​high volcanic activity. But what exactly was the driving force behind the split is somewhat unclear.

One theory, from the 1970s, says that the cause is not tectonic activity, but rather differences in the density of the Earth’s crust. Since the 1990s, however, more and more people have suspected that the so-called ultra-pole current plays an important role.

Simply put, the theory says that underground flows of magma (molten rock) cause what we observe at the surface in East Africa.

stretch

in current column Lava is pushed through the Earth’s layers of the mantle (the liquid layer of rock between the Earth’s crust and core) all the way. The super shaft current is a giant version of one.

According to a new report from a research team at Virginia Tech, published in Journal of Geophysical ResearchIn conclusion, what we see around the rift is a mixture of the two mentioned phenomena.

Computer models confirm that the African Supercurrent is responsible for the unusual deformations, as well as the seismic anisotropy. [retningsmønsteret steinene ligger i] Which is observed under the East African Rift System, the university writes.

Geophysicist Sarah de Stamps explains that the continental divides are extended Lithosphere – the hard outer layer of the Earth, which is divided into tectonic plates on which the continents are located. As the lithosphere stretches thinner and thinner, deformations form – this leads to fracturing of rock layers, as well as earthquakes.

Unusual pattern

Stamps shows that continental rift deformations typically follow predictable directional patterns perpendicular to the rift; The East African Rift System has exactly that.

But after studying the fault system using GPS data from more than 30 satellites for more than a dozen years, Stamps saw that the deformation also ran parallel to the fault’s direction. And this is where the Super Column Stream comes in.

An exceptionally deep blue hole

The supercolumn stream originates deep in the Earth below southwest Africa and travels across the continent in a northeasterly direction. On the way it gets shallower and shallower.

Two different roles

Through advanced 3D modeling, the team concluded that the unusual deformation of the rift system parallel to the rift is driven by mantle flow in a northerly direction connected to the African Super-Column Current.

– What we are saying is that the mantle flow is not the driving force behind the east-west direction, perpendicular to the rift that we see in some deformations, but that it may cause an unusual deformation in the north, parallel to the rift, says researcher Taheri Rajaonarisson.

It is noted that the east and west forces are due more to the density differences in the earth’s crust, or the so-called lithosphere buoyancy forces.

We previously confirmed ideas that buoyancy forces in the lithosphere are driving the rift, but we gained new insight that unusual deformation could be occurring in East Africa.