Scientists have warned that Africa is breaking apart faster than previously thought.
A 35-mile-long fissure in Ethiopia’s desert emerged in 2005 but has since been widening at a rate of half an inch per year.
Researchers previously believed the split would take tens of millions of years, but Ken Macdonald, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara,told DailyMail.com that it would likely happen within one to five million years.
The separation would also create a new ocean and continent on Earth.
‘What might happen is that the waters of the Indian Ocean would come in and flood what is now the East African Rift Valley,’ Macdonald said.
Macdonald added that the new ocean could become as deep as the Atlantic if waters continue to flow into the area.
The crack stretches through Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania and half of Ethiopia, which the professor said would become a new continent called the ‘Nubian continent.’
While the two parts are drifting at an extremely slow pace, Macdonald said that it is impressive given the massive size of Africa.
‘In the human life scale, you won’t be seeing many changes. You’ll be feeling earthquakes, you’ll be seeing volcanoes erupt, but you won’t see the ocean intrude in our lifetimes.’
The separation stems from the East African Rift System, which is a 2,000-mile rift that formed at least 22 million years ago where the continent’s Great Lakes reside.
This region is also home to two tectonic plates, the Somali and Nubian, that are actively moving away from each other.
The Earth’s lithosphere, formed by the crust and the upper part of the mantle, is divided into several tectonic plates. But the mechanisms behind the movements have yet to be uncovered.
Some researchers speculate the mechanism is slow, circular movements of partially molten rock caused by heat rising from the Earth’s core.
Regardless, the movement of plates is what’s happening in the East African Rift System.
‘There’s slippage and faults creating earthquake activity, along with visible signs of active volcanoes,’ Macdonald said.
‘In recent years, the main breakthroughs have been figuring out exactly where the branches of this rift system go.
‘The northern part was reasonably well understood, going through Djibouti and into Kenya, but going south from there, people really had very little idea.’
Recent studies have used sensors such as satellite gravity data and seismic scans to understand what is happening beneath the ground.
Former NASA and Space Force consultant Alexandra Doten explained on her Astro Alexandra Instagram channel, ‘Eastern Africa sits upon the Somalia plate.
‘The line along the border is the African Great Lakes. These are some of the largest lakes on Earth. This is 25 percent of all of the unfrozen surface fresh water on the planet, and they already hold about 10 percent of all of Earth’s fish species.
‘The lakes formed because Eastern Africa is separating from the rest of the continent. That Somali plate is continuing to move even further east, creating a giant rift valley right here. It keeps going.
‘Eventually, Eastern Africa is going to become its new continent, separated from the rest of Africa by a new ocean.’
Researchers previously believed that the ‘split’ would take 10s of millions of years, but Macdonald says the split could happen within one to five million years.
A study published in Frontiers in Earth Science in 2024 highlighted how different parts of the East African Rift system show varying levels of volcanic activity related to the split.
‘The Uganda, Tanzania, eastern and southern Congo, and Kaapvaal Cratons exhibit shallow high-density anomalies underlain by low-density anomalies apparently originating from deeper mantle depths, indicative of a thinning of the lithosphere, with some degree of melting at the base,’ the researchers wrote.
Fissures also appeared in Kenya in 2018 after heavy rainfall, with some locals reporting feeling the ground shake at the time.
Researchers have suggested that such ‘cracks’ will continue to form as the two plates move apart – with Madagascar also splitting into two separate islands.
In a 2020 study by Virginia Tech, researchers suggested that new oceans would form first in the northern part of the Rift.
D. Sarah Stamps, a professor for the Department of Geosciences, said, ‘The rate of extension is fastest in the north, so we’ll see new oceans forming there first.’
‘Most previous studies suggested that the extension is localized in narrow zones around microplates that move independently of surrounding larger tectonic plates.’
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