Great Crack In The Earth
By, TemblorThis photo shows a large crack that recently appeared in the East African Rift Valley. The crack, which is up to 50 feet deep and 65 feet wide significantly damaged a major road and destroyed homes.The East African Rift Valley is one of the most famous geologic regions on earth.
Stretching for over 3,000 km from the Gulf of Aden in the north to Mozambique in the south, it marks where the African continent is being split into the Somali and Nubian plates. Scientists estimate that within 10 million years, the Somali plate will break off from the rest of Africa and a new ocean basin will form. Even though this is an extremely slow process, every once in a while, new crevices appear, highlighting the power of earth’s tectonic forces. Only recently, near the small town of Mai Mahiu, just west of Kenya’s capital of Nairobi, a large crack, 50 feet deep and 65 feet wide appeared, damaging a major road, and several houses.
A man takes a selfie in front of the large crack in the East African Rift following heavy rain. (Reuters/Thomas Mukoya)This crack did not form overnight, but it did appear in a matter of momentsA crack of this magnitude does not form overnight. The rifting process in East Africa is taking place at a rate of approximately 0.25 inches per year, or in other words, unnoticeable to most. We also know from aerial imagery that this feature was present prior to this massive unveiling. In the Google Earth image below, a large linear feature, perfectly matching the orientation of the crack in the photo above, is clearly visible cutting across the landscape.
So, what happened to make the crack appear all of a sudden? The answer is simple: rain. This Google Earth image shows the location of the collapsed road near the town of Mai Mahiu, just east of Nairobi. This photo also appears to show evidence of the crack, which is pointed out by the red arrows. The linear feature appears to match the orientation of the crack in the photo above.Over the last month, Kenya has experienced heavy rainfall, which has resulted in extensive flooding across much of East Africa.
While flooding alone would not do this, much of the soil has volcanic ash from nearby Mt. Longonot (see below). Volcanic ash can be easily washed away, meaning when heavy rain came, the water followed the path of least resistance, revealing this crevice. According to reports from National Geographic, at least one resident narrowly escaped his house before it collapsed. For the time being, local news outlets are reporting that the crack is being filled in with concrete and rocks, as the Mai Mahiu-Narok road is a major transportation route in Kenya. Scientists believe that erosion of soil rich in ash from nearby Mt. Longonot (shown above) is responsible for the appearance of the large crack in the East African Rift.
(Photo by: David Jacobson)The video below, shows the major crack which has only recently appearedWhy is Africa Rifting? This photo shows the East African Rift Valley in Tanzania.
(Photo from: Shutterstock)Earth’s tectonic plates are constantly in motion. As these plates move, they can slide next one another, like the San Andreas Fault, collide with one another forming mountain ranges like the Himalayas, or move apart from each other, which is what is happening in East Africa. As the Somali plate slowly separates from the Nubian plate, the earth’s crust gets thinner. Even though this process is slow, eventually the crust gets too thin and ruptures, creating a rift valley. This is the first step in the continental breakup process. The figure below shows these plate boundaries in East Africa and highlight where Africa is breaking apart, illustrating where a new ocean basin may form.
While we will not be around to see that, we can bear witness to some of the initial stages. This figure shows the plate boundaries in East Africa as well as the approximate location of the newly-exposed crack. Scientists estimate that if the continental breakup process continues, in 10 million years, a new ocean basin will form where the Rift Valley is now. (James Wood and Alex Guth, Michigan Technological University. Basemap: Space Shuttle radar topography image by NASA)ReferencesThe ConversationPBSNational GeographicQuartzDaily Nation.
7-9-00 - DREAM - I don't know what city I was in. I was witha man going somewhere along a sidewalk. There was two way traffic so westayed to the right. We actually walked on the grass on the right andleft the sidewalk to the people going the other way. I was telling theman that I could walk this way without even opening my eyes because thegrass was so dark and the sidewalk was so white, I could tell where Iwas with my eyes closed.
I actually had my eyes open a tiny slitand was cheating but he didn't know that. However, we came to a widerplace where it was all concrete and I had to open my eyes all the way orI couldn't see which way I was going.On the road was a man riding a motorcycle with a baby on his backin a sling-type thing. He had to cross a huge chasm to go to work.He was going the opposite direction than we were. The baby alwayssang while he drove, but when they came to the chasm, the baby would cryout, 'Mama!' This day the baby was crying out,'Mama' really loud and he stopped the motorcycle so the babywould stop crying.We were right there and he asked us if we would take care of thebaby as he didn't feel right crossing the chasm and distressing the babythat much.
So, we agreed we would take the baby for him.The man left then on his way to work, and we stopped at an Innwhich was right there. We found out then that the baby sang songs at theInn and his Mama came and asked us if we would stay so the baby couldsing for us which would please him immensely. We didn't want totake the time, however, we stayed, and the baby sang a pretty song about'Mary!'
As we left the building, there was some kind of deal where youcouldn't get in unless you had a Master key but if you didn't have thekey you could knock and they'd have to look to see who you were and thendecide whether they wanted to let you in or not. As we wereleaving, we accidentally kicked the key out the door.
It was a longsilver key. I really didn't want to take the Master key, but therewas a man watching me and I tried kicking the key back into the door andnot take it, but with the man watching me, I had to pick the key up andtake it with me.We then went on our way towards the city and I went to a hugebuilding that had a high dome on top of it and people lived way up nearthe top of the building. There, I met a Master key person whoshowed me a Master key blank which was gold and in the shape of alarge square at the bottom. I compared it mentally with the Masterkeys I was in charge of in Milwaukee which we used in our buildingoutside doors.
When I looked closely at it, one could see that it washinged and could bend back against itself so it wasn't as wide as itfirst appeared. The whole key blank was there in duplicate. I showed himthat I knew how the Master key worked and showed him how the Master keyslooked that I was familiar with.
They were only half as wide.I then went on down the hallway inside the domed building to theother end where there was a maintenance worker sitting waiting forsomeone to come and inspect the building.I was very impressed how beautiful it was outside the window wherehe was sitting; immense flower beds were right there. I couldn't see thedoor and assumed it was around a slight corner next to the window.However, off to the side of this hallway, the floor of the domewent right on down to the bottom of the dome which was a mirrorreflection so to speak of the dome overhead, it went down to almost apoint on the bottom where I could see a small circle from which the domewalls went upward. Inside the building was built like a ball andwe were inside of it. The people lived above that.The inspector came and I was off to the side and could hear themspeaking about the roof of the dome. It had cracked. Theinspector told the maintenance man that the first crack had come andthey had just watched it zip across the ceiling and it wasn't dangerousso they had just paid 'Mary' the owner.
$3,000,000 for thedamage.However, a new crack had just opened up and he took a long stickand I saw him reach way up to the top of the dome and show themaintenance man that huge sections of the dome were now loose and hepushed against the concrete dome and it creaked ominously. I watched ashuge portions of the dome pushed upward. Punky and soft like theycould easily fall down. Like it was water soaked from above.I felt really afraid that the dome would collapse at some pointand all those people would die when they fell into the open space wherewe were now standing because they didn't know how to fix the domedceiling.
When it cracked, there was no stopping it, and there wasno way to stop the seeping of the water which was damaging the domedceiling either. The further cracking and falling in of the ceilingwas inevitable.I tried to envision how it could be fixed perhaps in smallsections, but with all those people living above the dome. It wasfeat way beyond my imagination. 2005-12-29Atalaysaid there were no immediate concerns about the Afar region, notingthat it would take a couple of million years before the area turnsinto an ocean basin.For scientists researching the phenomena, the Afar region is a naturallaboratory where the transition between oceanic rift and continentalrift is visible on land. Such transition is also evident in Iceland.'
The events we witnessed in Afar for about seven weeks haveenabled us to look into the possible, faster rate of rifting in theregion,' said Atalay.' Original news source:Ethiopian, American and European researchers have observed afissure in a desert in the remote northeast that could be the'birth of a new ocean basin,' scientists said Friday.Researchers from Britain, France, Italy and the U.S. Have beenobserving the 37-mile long fissure since it split open in Septemberin the Afar desert and estimate it will take a million years tofully form into an ocean, said Dereje Ayalew, who leads the team of18 scientists studying the phenomenon.The fissure, now 13 feet wide, formed in just three weeks after aSept. 14 earthquake in a barren region called Boina, some 621 milesnorth east of the capital, Addis Ababa, said Dereje.' We believe we have seen the birth of a new ocean basin,'said Dereje of Addis Ababa University. 'This is unprecedentedin scientific history because we usually see the split after it hashappened. But here we are watching the phenomenon.'
Please visit the linkprovided for the complete story.I can understand why scientist are excited about this phenomenon, eventhough there is no guarantee that the earth will still be here amillion years from now. Not that there is any reason to believe thatit won't, but a lot of things can happen in a million years. Thisprocess does remind us that our planet is a dynamic body that justmight surprise us all by negating every doomsday scenario we caninvent and find revitalization in ways we could could neveranticipate.Iceland Lake Disappearing Into New Crack inEarth.
October 1, 2001Icelanders are accustomed to their land being stretched, split, and tornby violent earthquakes and haphazardly rebuilt by exploding volcanoes.But everyone was surprised when a large lake began to disappear into along fissure created by one of last summer's earthquakes.The draining lake is an oddity even by Icelandic standards, and haslured hordes of curious onlookers to it barren shores.' If you put your ear to the ground, you can hear the lakedraining,' said geologist Amy Clifton of the Nordic VolcanologicalInstitute in Reykjavik, Iceland. 'It sounds like water going downthe sink.' Last year, during a leisurely Sunday drive, a geologist noticed alarge gash in the landscape about 20 kilometers (13 miles) fromReykjavik and reported it to Clifton. When she arrived she found afissure預bout a foot wide and 400 meters (1,280 feet) long葉hat leddirectly into Lake Kleifarvatn and disappeared beneath the water.Lake Kleifarvatn, which measured about six kilometers (3.7 miles)long and 2.3 kilometers (1.4 miles) wide last year, has shrunkdramatically. Now it is only 3.5 kilometers long and roughly 1.8kilometers wide, said Clifton.Kleifarvatn is draining at about one centimeter (one-third of aninch) a day, according to Clifton.
'You can almost see the lakelevel drop,' she said.Summerhouses that were once mere steps from waterfront are nowmore than a kilometer away from the water's edge. The placid waters havedropped more than four meters in the last year. In their place is abarren lake bed speckled with sulphur-rimmed thermal springs that spitboiling water and mud.Clifton spends much of her time mapping and measuring 'rips,gashes, and holes' in the Icelandic landscape. Describing herselfas a 'walking pencil,' because her treks are all mapped byglobal positioning system (GPS) technology, she investigates opencracks, torn vegetation, rock falls, sinkholes, and other disturbancesand tries to determine what caused them.But what phenomenon created the large fissure at Lake Kleifarvatnis an enigma. 'I couldn't find an earthquake in our database thatwas big enough to cause such a huge rupture in the surface,' saidClifton.She and some of her colleagues think a 'quietearthquake' may be responsible.
Explaining such a scenario, Cliftonsaid the water may have 'lubricated the fault lines, allowing themto slide quietly and slowly, preventing the shock waves that wouldnormally accompany an earthquake.' The earthquake thought to be responsible for the fissure at LakeKleifarvatn occurred last year on June 17, about 80 kilometers (49miles) east in the South Icelandic seismic zone. 'No one everexpected earthquakes in this region to affect the surface in theReykjanes Peninsula, where Lake Kleifarvatn is located,' saidClifton.Clifton hopes to eventually understand the relationship betweenthe movement of faults deep within Earth and their surface effects inthe region. Such knowledge is important for mapping areas that may besubject to future hazards, especially in regions where the population isgrowing.While the Lake's dramatic disappearance is, forClifton, 'alarming, interesting, and unusual,' she and hercolleagues assume the waters will return. The last time a similar eventhappened was in 1912, after a magnitude 7 earthquake, and it took aboutthree decades for the water level to normalize, she said.Iceland experiences violent geological events because it sits atthe Mid-Atlantic ridge葉he boundary of the North American and Europeancontinental plates.
The North American plate is shifting westward andthe European plate is moving eastward. In the middle is a 'hotspot,' which spews the magma that has created the island ofIceland.
Iceland grows by two centimeters (three-fourths of an inch)every year because of stretching and building caused by the combinationof plate movements and volcanic activity.Clifton said: 'Iceland is a natural laboratory for studyingthis stretching and understanding the time scale on which these eventsoccur.' FROM:Maps of Atlantic Ocean fromNORTHERN HEMISPHERESOUTHERN HEMISPHEREIn Sri Lanka, warning sirens blared along the nation'seast coast and President.
Suswa Rift
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (Reuters) - The death toll in the earthquake and.www.greatdreams.com/sri-lanka.htmThe tsunami battered Sri Lanka's southern and easterncoastlines. In SriLanka, residents of a tsunami-ravaged town packed up and left - readyto.www.greatdreams.com/weather/tsunamiinourfuture.htmThe California EarthquakePrediction Evaluation Council, a group of eight.Earthquake shakes central California coast;preliminary magnitude of 6.5.www.greatdreams.com/laware.htmThered lines on the map below are the cracks in the earth that move almostcontinuouslyMarch 15, 2006AFRICA'S NEW OCEANA Continent Splits ApartBy Axel BojanowskiNormally new rivers, seas and mountains are born in slow motion. TheAfar Triangle near the Horn of Africa is another story. A newocean is forming there with staggering speed - at least by geologicalstandards. Africa will eventually lose its horn.Geologist Dereje Ayalew and his colleagues from Addis AbabaUniversity were amazed - and frightened.
They had only just stepped outof their helicopter onto the desert plains of central Ethiopia when theground began to shake under their feet. The pilot shouted for thescientists to get back to the helicopter. And then it happened: theEarth split open. Crevices began racing toward the researchers like azipper opening up. After a few seconds, the ground stopped moving, andafter they had recovered from their shock, Ayalew and his colleaguesrealized they had just witnessed history. For the first time ever, humanbeings were able to witness the first stages in the birth of an ocean. Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (9 Photos).Normally changes to our geological environment take place almostimperceptibly.
A life time is too short to see rivers changing course,mountains rising skywards or valleys opening up. In north-easternAfrica's Afar Triangle, though, recent months have seen hundreds ofcrevices splitting the desert floor and the ground has slumped by asmuch as 100 meters (328 feet). At the same time, scientists haveobserved magma rising from deep below as it begins to form what willeventually become a basalt ocean floor. Geologically speaking, it won'tbe long until the Red Sea floods the region.
The ocean that will then beborn will split Africa apart.The Afar Triangle, which cuts across Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti, isthe largest construction site on the planet. Three tectonic plates meetthere with the African and Arabian plates drifting apart along twoseparate fault lines by one centimeter a year. A team of scientistsworking with Christophe Vigny of the Paris Laboratory of Geologyreported on the phenomenon in a 2006 issue of the Journal of GeophysicalResearch.
While the two plates move apart, the ground sinks to make roomfor the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.Bubbling magma and the smell of sulphurA third crevice cuts south, splitting not far from Lake Victoria. Onebranch of the rift runs to the east, the other to the west of the lake.The two branches of this third crevice are moving apart by about onemillimeter a year.
Karte Afrika Afar-Senke english versionThe dramatic event that Ayalew and his colleagues witnessed in theAfar Desert on Sept. 26, 2005 was the first visual proof of this process- and it was followed by a week-long series of earthquakes. During themonths that followed, hundreds of further crevices opened up in theground, spreading across an area of 345 square miles.
'The earthhas not stopped moving since,' geophysicist Tim Wright of theUniversity of Oxford says. The ground is still splitting open andsinking, he says; small earthquakes are constantly shaking the region.Scientists have made repeated trips to the area since the drama oflast September.
Locals have reported a number of new cracks opening inthe ground, says geologist Cynthia Ebinger from the University ofLondon, and during each visit, new crevices are discovered. Fumes as hotas 400 degrees Celsius (752 degrees Fahrenheit) shoot up from some ofthem; the sound of bubbling magma and the smell of sulphur rise fromothers. The larger crevices are dozens of meters deep and severalhundred meters long. Traces of recent volcanic eruptions are alsovisible.In a number of places, cracks have opened up beneath the thin layer ofvolcanic ash that covers the region. As there is no ash in the fissures,it's clear that they opened up after the volcanic eruptions, most ofwhich took place at the end of September or in October, 2005.
A numberof locals who fled the eruptions have reported that a black cloud of ash- spewed out of the Dabbahu volcano - darkened the sky for three days.A new ocean floor on the Earth's surfaceBasalt magma has risen into some of the crevices. For the moment,Ayalew explains, the lava seems not to be rising further. A number ofrecent eruptions, though, have left layers of new basalt lava on theEarth's surface. And it's the exact same kind of lava that spews out ofvolcanic ridges deep under the ocean - a process which slowly pushesolder lava sediments away on either side. The process has only justbegun in the Afar Triangle - and scientists for the first time canwitness the birth of a new ocean floor.The source of the African magma looks to be a gigantic stream ofmolten rock rising from beneath the Earth's crust and slicing throughthe African continental plate like a blow torch. It's a process thatbegan thirty million years ago when lava broke through the continent forthe first time, separating the Arabian Peninsula from Africa andcreating the Red Sea.Now, it's the Afar Triangle's turn and it's sinking rapidly.
Large areasare already more than 100 meters (328 feet) below sea level. For now,the highlands surrounding the Denakil Depression prevent the Red Seafrom flooding these areas, but erosion and tectonic plate movement arecontinually reducing the height of this natural barrier.
The DenakilDepression, which lies to the east of Afar, is already prey to regularfloods - each flood leaving behind a crust of salt.Africa to lose its hornThe chain of volcanoes that runs along the roughly 6,000 kilometer(3,730 mile) long East African Rift System offers further testimony tothe breaking apart of the continent. In some areas around the outeredges of the Rift System, the Earth's crust has already cracked open,making room for the magma below.
From the Red Sea to Mozambique in thesouth, dozens of volcanoes have formed, the best known being Mt.Kilimanjaro and Mt. Nyiragongo.These fiery mountains too will one day sink into the sea.
Geophysicistshave calculated that in 10 million years the East African Rift Systemwill be as large as the Red Sea. When that happens, Africa will lose itshorn.FROM. Anomalies hint at magnetic poleflip - (10 April 2002)South African anomalyThey used data from theﾘrsted satellite to study strange variations in the Earth's magneticfield.
In particular, one large patch under South Africa is pointingin the opposite direction from the rest of the Earth's field and hasbeen growing for hundreds of years.The anomalies have already reduced the overall strength of theplanet's magnetic field by about 10 per cent.See also superplumes rising from the Earth's mantle. There'sone near South Africa (see, too, theSouth African anomaly, above) and another is offthe eastern coast of Australia.Superplumes Rumble Inside Earth (19 April 2002)'drawings of ETs and maps'.