Africa is splitting in two in the form of new oceans

Work is underway to separate Africa into two continents and form a new oceanAccording to a recent study of tectonic plate shifts in Ethiopia.

The 2005 appearance of the East African Rift, a 35-mile-wide crack in the Ethiopian desert, marked the beginning of a phenomenon not seen in hundreds of millions of years.

Tectonic plate separation

The separation of the Somali tectonic plate from the Nubian tectonic plate will divide the world’s second largest continent.

The division of the African continent will not be completed for 5 to 10 million years, according to the researchers, but when it does, it will give rise to Earth’s sixth ocean. Countries such as Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda, which are currently landlocked, will see a coastline that will expand trade and production potential.

Create a new environment

The Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea will flood the Afar region and the East African Rift Valley and become a new oceanAccording to Ken McDonald, a marine geophysicist and professor emeritus at the University of California. This part of East Africa will become an independent small continent.

The study was published in the scientific journal Earth sciences and planetary messages They discovered that the Somali and Nuba tectonic plates diverge by only a few millimeters per year, leading the researchers to conclude that Africa is splitting in two. This phenomenon was not observed hundreds of millions of years ago, when South America and Africa were divided into different continents.

Conclusion

The emergence of the Earth’s sixth ocean is an exciting phenomenon for scientists, but it will happen very slowly. At the moment, researchers continue to monitor the process of dividing the African continent and the formation of a new ocean, which is expected to have a significant impact on the geography and economy of the region.