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Giant Rift In Africa Will Create a New Ocean
Hugh Pickens writes "Researchers at the University of Rochester believe that a 35-mile rift in the desert of Ethiopia will likely become a new ocean in a million years or so, connecting the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden. Using newly gathered seismic data, researchers have reconstructed how the rift tore open along its entire 35-mile length in just days. Dabbahu, a volcano at the northern end of the rift, erupted first, then magma pushed up through the middle of the rift area and began 'unzipping' the rift in both directions. '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,' says Cindy Ebinger, professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Rochester. The results show that highly active volcanic boundaries along the edges of tectonic ocean plates may suddenly break apart in large sections, instead of in bits, as the leading theory had previously held. The sudden large-scale events pose a much more serious hazard to populations living near the rift than would several smaller events."
BUY beachfront property NOW!
After a while* you'll be sitting on a goldmine!
(* definition of "while" might be different in your state)
Nothing to see here folks... move along. Come back in a million years or so.
What's next? Another story about Duke Nukem Forever?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Swallowing up thousands of hectares of the English countryside! With no warning! On the Most Dangerous Cheesiest Night on Television!
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There is a theory that the flood story of Noah is based on the actual deluge which created the Black Sea.
Before the Flood, this area was simply a low-lying area, but approximately 5000 years ago waters from the Mediterranean Sea spilled over the Bosporus and rapidly filled the Black Sea area within days. The massive influx of water wiped out many local civilizations and probably gave rise to the Flood legend.
If this rift is going to become a new ocean, the water must come from somewhere. If it all comes at once, we could see a massive loss of life and property, especially as the problematic area lies in some of the poorest parts of the globe. In another 5000 years, we could be debating if the Savior Adibi Christ walked with elephants!
the future is not much brighter
Ohmigod don't open the rift, captain ....
"Cats like plain crisps"
if we observed one ocean in a few decades of satellite observations (or if you want replace with "in a few thousand years of written history"..we should have more than 3 oceans right now.
I would say that this doesn't really fall under the category of "stuff that matters".
The big news here isn't that an ocean will form: that's old news. We've known about the the Great Rift Valley" for a long time, and that three plates are pulling apart. What's interesting is that they've confirmed part of the process that's at work. I think this story a little over-hyped.
There's the answer to rising sea levels... Divert the water into what will eventually become an ocean basin anyway.
Swallowing up thousands of hectares of the English countryside! With no warning! On the Most Dangerous Cheesiest Night on Television!
This made-for-TV movie is brought to you by Cheetoes, they're dangerously cheesy.
The news is not that the East African rift will form a new ocean - that's been known for a few years - but that it can happen very quickly. A timescale of days for an event of that scale is really rather significant, since it means that if something like it were to happen anywhere near existing infrastructure, our ability to adapt to it would be extremely limited. Well, not until afterwards anyway.
Another geographical blunder in the article is saying that the rift will connect the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. That's because they're already connected.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
it's about goddamn time!
Since the sea level is supposed to rise from melting ice due to global warming, the new proposed sea created at the behest of Al Gore, can be used to offset the extra water. Besides there will extra ocean front property for beach houses. On the other hand I'll be dead so it will be some else's problem.
"M'gulu gulu mulugu lugulugu" (*)
"lugulugu um'gulu lulu?"
"gugu"
"gugu lulu gugu?"
"gugu kaboom"
(*) Translation:
"There's something very important I forgot to tell you."
"What?"
"Don't cross the streams."
"Why?"
"It would be bad."
Perhaps nature itself is tired of all the in-fighting and is simply dividing the region for them.
On a more serious note, what could an ocean and life-giving water mean for a harsh region like this? Perhaps some prosperity in the form of much needed farm land.
Not every rift is going to become an ocean like Atlantic. Some fail, as did the rift under the Big Lakes. Correct my rusty geology if I'm wrong.
A local herdsman's once in a lifetime eureka moment of envisioning the Earth as massive plates of goat's dug layered over a molten core was shattered by a school child explaining plate tectonics to the excited goat herder.
Wow! This is a revolution!
There fixed that for you
If everybody had an ocean
Across the desert sands,
Then everybody'd be surfin'
Like Ethiop-I-A
You'd see 'em wearin' their baggies
Huarachi sandals, too
A bushy bushy blonde hairdo
Surfin' Africa.
It's the same Ocean as the one from one year ago?
http://news.slashdot.org/story/08/10/05/1824237/Birth-of-a-New-African-Ocean?art_pos=3
And, in fact, what is an Ocean? If this will be an Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, right now, is a Mega Giga Ocean!
Whitehorse is the capital of the Yukon territory, that borders the northern part of British Columbia and borders the eastern part of Alaska. [map]
I come here for the love
Can't wait to see another Aussie-sounding infomercial guy selling you the one book on how to me a fuckzillion dollars in buying fixer-uppers for a fraction of a penny in the someday-to-be Ethiopian Riviera!
New ocean born within Africa.
Duke Nukem Forever development taken up again, should launch later next year.
As a child, I had nightmares about the giant rifts dramatically opening in the ground like they did in the Land Before Time movie. I had since convinced myself this was unlikely to happen, and assuaged my fears.
Thanks a lot, "Researchers at the University of Rochester"...
... unzipping ... tore open ... pushed up ... erupted ...
I feel strangely aroused ...
Surely we don't have to create new terms for things we already have words for.
It's called "poetic language". Back in the day, when verse was based on alliteration as opposed to rhyme, these new terms were called kennings.
The point being that ethnic cleansing is ok?
If you have a light-skinned actress portraying a dark-skinned character, is it "ethnic cleansing" when the actress removes her makeup?
Sorry, no waves expected until several hundred thousand years in the future ;)
How many times is this going to be reposted?
This is yet another feather in the cap of the Earth Inflation camp that the Geo-Educational Complex can't just explain away!
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
http://www.bendbox.com/11022009/problemsolved/
>If it all comes at once, we could see a massive loss of life and property, especially as the >problematic area lies in some of the poorest parts of the globe. New solution for poverty!
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Isn't the Red Sea already connected to the Gulf of Aden? The summary makes it sound as if this is currently not the case.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Aden
Al Gore is already campaigning to stop this change to earth's structure, and will soon be releasing his new documentary "An Inconvenient Rift" to educate people and gather support.
Scientists tried to explain to Mr. Gore that it's a natural event, not man-made, but he isn't listening.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The "basin and range" area in the USA is a slow tectonic spreading ridge. It has nearly doubled in width in the past 50 million years, resulting in down-dropped valleys and significant volcanism. Sometimes these spreading regions eventually stop as the tectonic plates alter configuration. Or they progress into full-fledged oceans.
If you're talking about the Missoula Floods, they couldn't have contributed "several meters" of sea level rise. Lake Missoula only had a volume of about 2200 cubic kilometers. The Greenland ice sheet (2.8 million cubic kilometers) is thought to hold an extra 7 meters worth of sea level. Using that scaling factor and ignoring density differences between water and ice, that works out to about 0.5 centimeters of potential sea level rise from Lake Missoula. And it's also contested whether the whole lake could have drained "in a matter of days", or in smaller bursts spread out over a century.
I know of other abrupt drainage events as the last glacial period ended, which ultimately released volumes of water similar to Missoula (e.g., from Lake Agassiz). But I've never heard of and can't imagine any drainage event that could release millions of cubic kilometers of water in a matter of days.
This paper (summarized here) is of interest. It's not talking about "abrupt" drainage, but "rapid" sea level rise. It goes back to the last interglacial, i.e., after the end of the next-to-last glacial period. This was about 115,000 years ago, too early to be related to global flood myths. The paper describes evidence for 5 centimeter/year sea level rise sustained for 50 years, amounting to at least 2.5 meters (8 feet) of sea level rise over half a century. That's the fastest multi-meter sea level rise event I know of. It's really rather tremendous if you think about it, equivalent to a third of the entire Greenland ice sheet disintegrating in a few decades. It will be interesting to see if this interpretation is confirmed by other researchers.
The Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden are *already* connected. Previous poster hinted at it with a map, but it's blindingly obvious, so I will be too. Maybe talking about some *other* body of water? The African rift-valley lakes perhaps? (didn't RTFA, shame on me)
Ugh, another boring British film. Everybody knows nobody important lives in Sheffield. (Just kidding, I have friends there.)
And I still can't get over the asinine change to the "siffie" channel. I want some of what those idiots are smoking, it must be good stuff.
... to have some arms manufacturers try to sell Ethiopia equipment for a coast guard.
Have gnu, will travel.
The basin and range represents continental crustal extension, which is spread out across the entire region. This is more-or-less driven by pulling on either end. Actually, the driving forces are not completely understood (which is why I'm using "more-or-less" to describe these things).
Oceanic crustal extension, on the other hand, is more-or-less being pushed apart from the center. So the rifting and so on is focused in one area - the rift zone. That's why the Mid Atlantic Ridge or the East African Rift - spreading centers - are (more or less) linear features and not spread out like the basin and range is.
Note that while I call it "oceanic crustal extension", it is obviously not limited to oceanic crust - it is rifting the continental crust in Africa. But, this is why we say a new ocean will form here, but not in the western US. When the continental crust is pushed open enough, oceanic crust will begin to form. Oceanic crust is thin and dense, which is why it's topographically lower than continental crust, which tends to form more thickly and is less dense.
I'm a geology grad student (and my B.S. in geology is from the University of Rochester, where this latest research is from) studying tectonics, but I'll admit freely that my explanation may be wrong as this isn't really my focus (I'm more interested in compressional, rather than extensional, tectonics). So I welcome any corrections anyone can offer.
It's quite obvious that we caused this rather significant change. When will we step up and take responsibility for this climate change and do something to reverse it?
And, why can't the Sumerian story follow the Biblical one?
Or, better yet, if all the people in the world experienced the same event, why can't they each have a different perspective on it?
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
Check out more information on this article at futurity.org: http://futurity.org/earth-environment/seafloor-dynamics-at-work-splitting-continent/
Futurity. Discover the Future.
I learned about this in _grammar school_...