Giant crack in Ethiopia exhibits the makings of an ocean--study

image source: greaves2000.co.uk

A new study has prompted researchers to confirm that the 35-mile rift in the desert of Ethiopia will most likely become a new ocean in time.

This giant crack which is 20 feet wide in spots opened in 2005. Geologists then believed that it would turn into a new ocean. That belief has become controversial and until now, has not been studied well enough.

This new study which involves an international team of scientists and reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters says that processes that are creating the rift are nearly identical to what usually happens at the bottom of oceans. It is also the very same rift activity that is slowly parting the Red Sea.

Researchers used newly gathered seismic data from 2005 to reconstruct the event to see how the rift tore open along its entire 35-mile length in just days.

Cindy Ebinger, professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Rochester and co-author of the study explains, “We know that seafloor ridges are created by a similar intrusion of magma into a rift, but we never knew that a huge length of the ridge could break open at once like this.”

(via Live Science)