New Ocean being Formed in Africa

PenguinRadio writes "The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting on a 37-mile long fissure that split open in September in the Afar desert in Ethiopia that could be the start of a new ocean forming. The fissure, which grew 8 meters wide in 3 weeks following an earthquake on Sept 14, is now splitting at about 0.8 inches per year, would eventually lead to Ethiopia eastern portions becoming an island in a million years or so. The findings were presented at the American Geophysical Union meeting taking place in San Francisco this week. The BBC reports that formation of a ocean basin is the first step toward developing an ocean, but that it will be millions of years before that could occur."

Comments

Future Lake?

[nurb432]

Given the timefram here, how do we *know* its going to be a ocean?

Oceans are pretty damned large. This thing may never surpass 'lake' stage. Or even just a big mud puddle that reverts back to 'land' when it dries up.

Re:A better version of the answer :)

[roman_mir]

One man's Troll is the other man's Funny and is the third man's Truth.

Re:bookmark this

[roman_mir]

Something about the moderation of this post teaches me about the realities of the world. The parent post was moderated as 'Troll' at least 5 times by now. It was then moderated as Funny also just as many times.

What we are observing here on this miniscule scale is the gigantic battle that is taking place in this world. The battle between the forces of stupidity, obedience, fanatism, blind religiouos principles versus the forces of logic, humour, personal responsibility, scientific principles, and tolerance. /. can be viewed as reflection of the world.

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BTW. I wanted everyone to note, that yesterday we lost a person, who was one of the people fighting this same battle. I don't need to tell you which side of the battle he was on.