MessageToEagle.com -
This huge rift can be clearly seen from space.
Geologists are truly surprised at how fast it developed, when a 60 meter long rift opened up in Ethiopia.
It occurred in the course of a few days, in 2005 and the rift is still expanding.
According to recent reports, particularly those from the University of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the rift is
steadily expanding and will allow a new ocean to form and separating East Africa from the rest of the continent.
A 500-metre-long crack opened up in just a few days in Afar, Ethiopia, in 2005 (Photo Credit: University of Rochester)
"The ocean's formation is happening slowly, likely to take a few million years.
It will stretch from the Afar depression (straddling Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti) down to Mozambique,"
professor Atalay Ayele, lead researcher at the Addis Ababa University explained.
The seismic movements observed in Ethiopia are very similar to the changes normally caused by faults and fissures on the seafloor,
where the processes moving tectonic plates usually start
However, this time it is happening violently and very fast.
Dr. James Hammond, a seismologist from the University of Bristol, says that parts of the region are below sea level and the Indian Ocean is only cut off
by about a 20-meter strip of land in Eritrea:
"Eventually this will drift apart.... The sea will flood in and will start to create this new ocean.
It will pull apart, sink down deeper and deeper and eventually... parts of southern Ethiopia, Somalia will drift off, create a new island,
and we'll have a smaller Africa and a very big island that floats out into the Indian Ocean."
As the researchers explained, after last known eruption of Dabbahu in 2005, a volcano located in the remote Afar desert of Ethiopia,
magma pushed up through the middle of the rift area and began "unzipping" the rift in both directions.
The entire eastern part of the African continent has been affected by the strong forces.
Both small and large cracks can be found. Photo Credit: Cindy Ebinger/University of Rochester
"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 professor Cindy Ebinger of Department of Earth And Environmental Science, University of Rochester.
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MessageToEagle.com -
This huge rift can be clearly seen from space.
The Arecibo Telescope in Puerto Rico has discovered sporadic bursts of polarized radio emission from the T6.5 brown J1047+21.
This alien intruder from another galaxy is in many ways different from other exoplanets observed by astronomers.
The 3C294, is one of the most distant galaxies recorded by Chandra, the most sophisticated X-ray observatory ever built.
The cluster 3C294 is even 40 percent farther (!) than the next most distant x-ray galaxy cluster.
Chandra focus on X-rays from high-energy regions of the Universe and see the invisible.
It is so sensitive that it can capture images of particles as they disappear into a black hole deep in outer space.
Every time you look at the beautiful and famous image of the Pillars of Creation taken by Hubble back in 1995,
you are actually admiring something that no longer exists.