A large land crack existing in Ethiopia is increasing day by day as its length has reached about 60 kilometers inside the country by now, eventually, prompting new discussion on the breakup of Africa into two land masses.
Earlier reports said that the crack continues to grow in size in the continent as heavy rainfall in Kenya's Narok County, for instance, exacerbates the kilometer-sized chasm.
According to Trevor Nace, Science editor at Forbes, the leading hypothesis behind the breakup of the African continent is caused by an underlying superheated plume. This plume is causing Africa to split in two along the eastern edge of the continent. “Thankfully, the rifting process will take many millions of years as the crust begins to thin and sink and a small seaway begins to intrude the rift zone,” he wrote.
Nace considered that while scientists have known for quite some time about the rifting in Africa, the underlying cause has been hard to pin down. “Evidence suggests it is due to a superplume upwelling along the eastern edge of Africa, figuratively "burning" a hole in Earth's crust”.
[caption id="attachment_55121" align="aligncenter" width="399"]
Schematic of a mantle plume similar to the one seen in the East African Rift system.[/caption]
Nace wrote that this superplume created the East African Rift System (EARS), the system associated with the breakup of the African continent. The East African Rift Valley, produced as a result of the ongoing splitting of the African continent, stretches more than 3,000 km from the Gulf of Aden to Zimbabwe. The rifting, which began about 25 million years ago, will eventually create two separate continental masses associated with the Somalian and Nubian tectonic plates. The process, however, will take millions of years at the current spreading rate of a few millimeters per year.
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