Tuesday, November 3, 2009

A New Ocean?

A 35-mile rift in the desert of Ethiopia will likely become a new ocean eventually, researchers now confirm.
The crack, 20 feet wide in spots, opened in 2005 and some geologists believed then that it would spawn a new ocean. But that view was controversial, and the rift had not been well studied.
A new study involving an international team of scientists and reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters finds the processes creating the rift are nearly identical to what goes on at the bottom of oceans, further indication a sea is in the region's future.


Further down in the article it states that the same rift is parting the Red Sea. Fascinating!

2 comments:

Soccer Dad said...

Yes it's a process that will take a few million years. And according to scientists that's pretty fast.

I hope you don't mind my saying that by the time the process is complete you will be pretty old.

:-)

shira said...

:)