Splitting the continent of Africa into two parts
Is the continent of Africa about to split into two parts? Africa is being divided imperceptibly, and the African continent will become even smaller in size than it is now.
Recently, a large crack appeared suddenly, extending for several miles in southwestern Kenya, and this crack may cause the division or fission of the African continent into two parts.
In fact, the growth of the huge rift in Kenya may lead to the disintegration of the brown continent and its split into two parts.
cleavage of the continent of Africa
British scientists warned earlier, of the splitting of the African continent into two halves, after a large crack appeared in southwestern Kenya on the African continent, extending for a distance of 3,000 km, and the expanding crack caused the collapse of the “Nairobi-Naruk” road, in conjunction with The emergence of seismic activity in the region.
The newspaper “Daily Mail” quoted Lucia Perez Diaz, a researcher in the Department of “Dynamics” at the University of “Royal Holloway” in Britain, that the Earth is a constantly changing planet, and this change may not be noticeable to us at times, as the Earth’s lithosphere is divided into a number of Tectonic plates, which are not fixed, but move over each other at varying speeds, due to the pressure generated at the boundaries that separate these plates.
These forces may also cause the plates to break apart, forming a rift or rift, and thus creating new plate boundaries, as is happening now with cracks in East Africa, for example, which extend for a distance of 3 thousand kilometers from the Gulf of Aden in the north towards Zimbabwe in the south, to divide the brown continent into two parts. They are the Somali and Nubian plate.
The rift activity in East Africa extends along Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania, where studies indicate that plate movements began from the Afar region in northern Ethiopia 30 million years ago, and spread south towards Zimbabwe, at a rate ranging from 2.5 to 5 centimeters annually.
The East African rift is unique in that it allows scientists to observe the different stages of its formation, starting from the south, where plate expansion rates are low, as well as the volcanic and seismic activities.
The floor of the rift valley is covered with volcanic rocks towards the Afar region, which indicates the weakness of the lithosphere to the point of fragmentation.
And when the crust breaks up, a new ocean will be formed by freezing the molten materials, resulting from the fracture of the plates.
Tens of millions of years later, the sea floor will advance along the rift, the African continent will become smaller, and a large island will be formed in the Indian Ocean, including parts of Ethiopia, Somalia and the Horn of Africa.
Great Rift in Kenya
Now researchers claim that within millions of years the African continent could split in two.
Why cracking occurs:
When the lithosphere is subjected to a horizontal stretching force, it will expand, and become thinner. Eventually, it will rupture, forming a rift valley. A continental rift requires expansive forces large enough to fracture the lithosphere.
This process is accompanied by surface manifestations along the Rift Valley in the form of volcanic and seismic activity. Rifts are the first stage of the continental divide and, if successful, can lead to the formation of a new ocean basin.
An example of this is what happened on Earth millions of years ago, in the South Atlantic Ocean, which resulted from the breakup of South America and Africa about 138 million years ago - have you ever ?noticed how their coastlines coincide
Although rifting is most of the time unnoticeable to us, the formation of new faults, fissures, and fissures or renewed motion along old faults as the Nubian and Somali plates continue to move away from each other can trigger earthquakes.
However, most of these earthquakes in East Africa are spread over a wide area across the Rift Valley and are relatively small in magnitude.
The volcanoes running side by side are another superficial manifestation of the ongoing continental splitting process and the proximity of the hot, molten asthenosphere to the surface.
Source: websites