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A new rift formed in September in the Afar desert 3 weeks after an earthquake. Now it is 37 miles long and 13 feet wide. It's moving apart at 0.8 inches a year. They think it'll form a new ocean basin in a million years like the Red Sea. The Red Sea had a ridge under it that's spreading apart too. Eastern Africa could be rifted off of Africa like the Arabian peninsula was by the Red Sea rift.
It should be interesting to figure out how the new rift would become part of the system of rifts we see in Africa that includes the Red Sea one and the Great Rift Valley and the parts that go north into the Dead Sea area.
They plan on setting up stations there to watch what happens. It's amazing that we saw this happen in historical times and our lifetimes.
The ridges under the Red Sea and the Atlantic Ocean formed way back in prehistory, in deep time, given the measured rates of plate motion and how well the mantle stuff down there can flow, which is known from things like sesimic wave measurements of its density.
A new rift formed in September in the Afar desert 3 weeks after an earthquake. Now it is 37 miles long and 13 feet wide. It's moving apart at 0.8 inches a year. They think it'll form a new ocean basin in a million years like the Red Sea. The Red Sea had a ridge under it that's spreading apart too. Eastern Africa could be rifted off of Africa like the Arabian peninsula was by the Red Sea rift.
It should be interesting to figure out how the new rift would become part of the system of rifts we see in Africa that includes the Red Sea one and the Great Rift Valley and the parts that go north into the Dead Sea area.
They plan on setting up stations there to watch what happens. It's amazing that we saw this happen in historical times and our lifetimes.
The ridges under the Red Sea and the Atlantic Ocean formed way back in prehistory, in deep time, given the measured rates of plate motion and how well the mantle stuff down there can flow, which is known from things like sesimic wave measurements of its density.
Sure's there'll be stuff sprewing out of it. If you read