Saturday, July 22, 2006

Continental rifting


This was my second time to read this title so I clicked it. Well it is amazing news. This things never happen so often....often???Not even in hundreds of years but why in Ethiopia? and why now?

"The Red Sea is parting again, but this time Moses doesnÂ’t have a hand in it.Satellite images show that the Arabian tectonic plate and the African plate are moving away from each other, stretching the Earth's crust and widening the southern end of the Red Sea, scientists reported in this week's issue of journal Nature.
Last September, a series of earthquacks started splitting the planet's surface along a 37-mile section of the East African Rift in Afar, Ethiopia. "

"Over a period of three weeks, the crust on the sides of the rift moved apart by 26 feet and magma—enough to fill a football stadium more than 2,000 times—was injected along a vertical crack, forming a new crust. "
"This latest split, added to the long-term rifting process, which is tearing the northeast of Ethiopia and Eritrea from the rest of Africa, could eventually create a huge new sea. Although such processes could take millions of years to occur, this event has given scientists an unprecedented opportunity to monitor the rupture in real time.
"Read more here
news.yahoo.com/s/space/20060719/sc_space/theredseapartsagain