The African continent is slowly splitting apart along the East African Rift, a 3,000 kilometre-long series of deep basins and flanking mountain ranges. An enormous plume of hot, partially molten rock is rising diagonally from the core-mantle boundary, some 2,900 kilometres beneath Southern Africa, and erupting at the Earth?s surface, or cooling just beneath it, in the Afar region of Ethiopia. It is the rise of this plume that is stretching the Earth?s crust to breaking point.
In September 2005, a series of fissures suddenly opened up along a 60-kilometre section as the plate catastrophically responded to the forces pulling it apart. The rapidity and immense length of the rupture ? an event unprecedented in scientific history ? greatly excited geologists, who rushed to this very remote part of the world to start measuring what was going on. It began with a big earthquake and continued with a swarm of moderate tremors. About a week into the sequence, eruption of the Dabbahu Volcano threw ash and rocks into the air, causing the evacuation of 6,300 people from the region, while cracks appeared in the ground, some of them more than a metre wide. The only fatality was a camel that fell into a fissure. While these movements are only the beginnings of what would be needed to create a new ocean ? the complete process taking millions of years ? the Afar event has given geologists a unique opportunity to study the rupture process which normally occurs on the floor of deep oceans.
Full story: http://www.physorg.com/news144671445.html
In September 2005, a series of fissures suddenly opened up along a 60-kilometre section as the plate catastrophically responded to the forces pulling it apart. The rapidity and immense length of the rupture ? an event unprecedented in scientific history ? greatly excited geologists, who rushed to this very remote part of the world to start measuring what was going on. It began with a big earthquake and continued with a swarm of moderate tremors. About a week into the sequence, eruption of the Dabbahu Volcano threw ash and rocks into the air, causing the evacuation of 6,300 people from the region, while cracks appeared in the ground, some of them more than a metre wide. The only fatality was a camel that fell into a fissure. While these movements are only the beginnings of what would be needed to create a new ocean ? the complete process taking millions of years ? the Afar event has given geologists a unique opportunity to study the rupture process which normally occurs on the floor of deep oceans.
Full story: http://www.physorg.com/news144671445.html