Giant Crack in Africa Will Create a New Ocean

A 35-mile rift in the desert of Ethiopia will likely become a new ocean eventually, researchers now confirm.
The crack, 20 feet wide in spots, opened in 2005 and some geologists believed then that it would spawn a new ocean.

http://www.livescience.com/environme...ift-ocean.html

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Well, it's not bad news. Ethiopia can use the water. When you look in the illustrated dictionary under drought, you will see a picture of Ethiopia.
Who can say how long it will take to reach the sea?

Dan

I'm guessing 2012.

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Hi, That's gonna be a more popular year than 2000 !!! Newspaper fodder,
for sure.

Dan

The British geologist John Walter Gregory also though so in 1896 after exploring the Great Rift Valley (other plate rifts were known but this is the longest).

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I hope you realise that 2012 in the Ethiopian Calendar runs from 12 September 2019 to 10 September 2020 by the western Calendar. (Ethiopian years more frequently commence on 11 September by the western Calendar, but on 12 September on years which have remainder 3 on division by 4, but only during the 20th and 21st (western) centuries; it will change in subsequent centuries.)

But I think it will be of the order of millions of years before Ethiopia obtains a sea coast by this method.

I shoulda used a smilie. I was joking.

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Hi, And I shall say that you have a wonderful smile !

This has always kind of seemed like a weird area to me. You've got the east African rift that joins the rifting Red Sea, which itself takes a bend out into a rift in the Indian Ocean. This appears to be a classic case of a triple junction, but the model predicts that one arm of that triple jounction will fail (e.g. the failed rift on the west side of Africa when the Atlantic Ocean started to form). Yet all appear at the moment. I've never actually taken the time to read the literature on what tectonics researchers have concluded about this example.

Water, water, everywhere, but not a drop to drink... Sea water doesn't work well on plant life, either.

You think they'll have moved to where the water is before then?

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If we halt the ISS, all versions of Ares, and transport Orion and Altair aboard DIRECTv3's Jupiter family of Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles, we just might make it back to the Moon by 2020.

I guess the thing about failed rifts is that they must be rifts before they can be failed rifts.
The Afar triple junction is very young*, and is classed as an R-R-R Triple Junction; all arms are diverging, albeit at different rates.

*geologically speaking


The Afar Depression: Was There a Triple Junction Above the Mantle Plume?
Ebinger, C.; Wolfenden, E.; Yirgu, G.; Ayalew, D.; Eagles, G.; Gloaguen, R.; Tiberi, C.; Rowland, J. R.; Deino, A.; Tesfaye, A.; Tesfaye, S.
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2002, abstract #S11A-1129
.........


Early continental breakup boundary and migration of the Afar triple junction, Ethiopia
1. Samson Tesfaye†1,
2. David J. Harding†2 and
3. Timothy M. Kusky‡3

+ Author Affiliations

1. Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, St. Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri 63103, USA
2. NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), Goddard Space Flight Center, Geodynamics Branch, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771, USA
3. Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, St. Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri 63103, USA

Corresponding author kusky@eas.slu.edu
*
o Accepted 9 December 2002.
o Received 12 March 2002.
o Revision received 23 October 2002.
* Geological Society of America

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I would comment but politics is off limits, even Ethiopian politics I guess.

Yes, but bricks without straw. If you at least have sea water, you can employ desalination. High pressure and millipore membrane filters powered by wind energy could make a difference in a land where it gets so little rain it
blows your mind. Anyway, it IS a way.
Best regards,
Dan

Yeah, but by the time this happens, humans won't even be human anymore.

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Ethiopia? So little rain? Why do you think it is the second most populous African country? With a mainly agricultural economy? What is the source of the Blue Nile, and cause of the Nile Floods in Egypt?

Plenty of rain in Ethiopia. Just a bit variable some years and not enough water storage to smooth out the peaks and troughs. There are some deserts in the east, but these are generally lightly populated.

Addis Abeba climate: http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/world/c...ml?tt=TT000200

What Ethiopia wants to regain access to the sea for is as a trade route.

But saying much more starts getting into politics.

Hi, I am not sure where exactly the rift is relative to the dry deserts.
I had heard that there were places where it hadn't rained in over ten years... (13 was quoted) . Yet we do see quality coffee beans produced
from that far away country.
If they get a route to the sea, I wish them well.

Dan

No, but it'll increase the local precipitation by a bit, and raise local water tables. All over a longer timescale than all of human existence so far, of course.

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I still look for sea shore property scams to come out of this. NPR's THIS AMERICAN LIFE did a story of scams out of Ghana: (Bait and Switch)

Out of Nigeria no doubt.

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