Photo credit: @Nel_kimz

It will never happen in our lifetime as it’ll take tens of millions of years to fully materialize but the world might see Africa splitting into two parts.

Geologists have known such a possibility for some time but it gained renewed interest with the news recently that a large crack, stretching several miles in length, made a sudden appearance in southwestern Kenya following heavy rain.

<blockquote class="twitter-video" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">A crack that opened up in Kenya’s Rift Valley, damaging a section of the Narok-Nairobi highway, is still growing… <a href="https://t.co/T5YocDauYj">pic.twitter.com/T5YocDauYj</a></p>— BBC (@BBC) <a href="https://twitter.com/BBC/status/978225066923249664?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 26, 2018</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Lucia Perez Diaz, a postdoctoral researcher on tectonics at a London university, Royal Holloway, said that the tear, which also continues to grow, collapsed part of a highway and “was accompanied by seismic activity in the area.”

The National Geographic also reported that the crack is located in East African Rift Valley region. It has a measure of more than 50 feet in depth and 65 feet across.

Perez Diaz also said that the valley stretches for more than 1,800 miles from the Gulf of Aden in the north towards Zimbabwe in the south, breaking the African plate into two unequal parts: with the smaller Somali plate and the larger Nubian plate.

It is possible that the rift should expand and break Africa into two continents. The smaller continent will then include Somalia and parts of Kenya, Ethiopia, and Tanzania. The bigger one will include all the others outside of those mentioned.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">So this will happen in the next 50M yrs. Can't wait <a href="https://t.co/g2uogxK9or">pic.twitter.com/g2uogxK9or</a></p>— K!M 🇰🇪™ (@Nel_kimz) <a href="https://twitter.com/Nel_kimz/status/975961532092870656?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 20, 2018</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Perez Diaz also shared: “Dramatic events, such as sudden motorway-splitting faults or large catastrophic earthquakes may give continental rifting a sense of urgency but, most of the time, it goes about splitting Africa without anybody even noticing.

Arizona State University geologist Christy Till also said that the process just happens very slowly and may take millions of years, but it has happened already in the past. The geologist said: “A rift like this once eventually separated the African and South American continents to form the Atlantic Ocean, and the rift in East Africa may be the very early stages of this.”

Source:

http://www.11alive.com/article/news/nation-world/breaking-up-is-hard-to-do-africa-could-eventually-split-into-two-continents/507-535244260

[tw_tags] #MAGA #KeepAmericaGreat! #Africa #AfricaIsBreakingUp #Geology #[/tw_tags]