{"id":634703,"date":"2026-04-27T19:45:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T19:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/634703\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T19:45:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T19:45:10","slug":"a-sixth-ocean-is-forming-as-east-africa-splits-apart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/634703\/","title":{"rendered":"A Sixth Ocean Is Forming as East Africa Splits Apart"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Since 2005, a 35-mile-long crack known as the East African Rift has been forming. <\/p>\n

In the scorching deserts of East Africa, the ground is slowly tearing itself apart \u2014 a slow-motion, geological drama. Over millions of years, the African continent will cleave in two, and scientists say a new ocean will one day fill the gap.<\/p>\n

The Afar region is most famous for being one of the hottest and most inhospitable places on Earth. But for geologists, what\u2019s more interesting is what lies beneath the scorching ground. The Afar sits at the crossroads of three tectonic plates \u2014 the Nubian, Somali, and Arabian \u2014 which are gradually pulling away from one another. This process, known as rifting, is reshaping the landscape and offering scientists a rare opportunity to study how continents split and oceans are born.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the only place on Earth where you can study how continental rift becomes an oceanic rift,\u201d Christopher Moore, a Ph.D. student at the University of Leeds, who uses satellite radar to monitor the region\u2019s volcanic activity, told NBC<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A Geological Laboratory<\/p>\n

The Afar region is home to the East African Rift Valley, a massive crack in the Earth\u2019s surface that stretches through Ethiopia and Kenya. In 2005, a 35-mile-long fissure opened in the Ethiopian desert. \u00a0It measures more than 50 feet in depth and\u00a065 feet across,\u00a0according to\u00a0National Geographic<\/a>.\u00a0A rift valley refers to a lowland region where tectonic plates rift, or move apart.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe violent split was equivalent to several hundred years of tectonic plate movement in just a few days,\u201d said Cynthia Ebinger, a geophysicist at Tulane University who has spent years studying the region.<\/p>\n

Ebinger\u2019s research suggests that the rifting process isn\u2019t always smooth. Instead, it can be punctuated by sudden, explosive events. She likens the process to overfilling a balloon: \u201cWe\u2019re trying to understand the straw that breaks the camel\u2019s back.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Credit: USA Today.<\/p>\n

These events are driven by the buildup of pressure from rising magma, which eventually forces the crust to crack. Over time, these cracks will grow, and the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea will flood into the rift, creating a new ocean<\/a> and breaking Africa into two continents:\u00a0The smaller continent will include present-day Somalia and parts of Kenya, Ethiopia, and Tanzania, while the bigger one will include everything else in Africa.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA 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,\u201d said<\/a>\u00a0Christy Till, an Arizona State University geologist. \u201cThe process just occurs very slowly and takes millions of years.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"MapMaps exhibiting the world\u2019s oceanic waters. A continuous body of water encircling Earth, the World\/Global Ocean is divided into five main areas. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.<\/p>\n

A Sixth Ocean<\/p>\n

For decades, scientists have studied the African rift, but modern technology has been a game-changer. GPS instruments, for example, allow researchers to measure the movement of tectonic plates with remarkable precision.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith GPS measurements, you can measure rates of movement down to a few millimeters per year,\u201d said Ken Macdonald, a marine geophysicist and professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A map of East Africa showing some of the historically active volcanoes (as red triangles) and the Afar Triangle (shaded at the center), which is a so-called triple junction (or triple point) where three plates are pulling away from one another: the Arabian plate and two parts of the African plate\u2014the Nubian and Somali\u2014splitting along the East African Rift Zone. Credit: Wikimedia Commons. <\/p>\n

The Arabian plate is moving away from Africa at a rate of about 1 inch per year, while the Nubian and Somali plates are separating more slowly, at half an inch to 0.2 inches annually. These movements may seem insignificant, but over millions of years, they will completely reshape the region.<\/p>\n

As the plates pull apart, material from deep within the Earth rises to the surface, forming new oceanic crust. \u201cWe can see that oceanic crust is starting to form, because it\u2019s distinctly different from continental crust in its composition and density,\u201d Moore explained.<\/p>\n

Scientists estimate it will take at least 5 to 10 million years for the Afar region to be fully submerged. When that happens, the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea will flood into the rift, creating a new ocean basin and turning the Horn of Africa into its own small continent.<\/p>\n

For now, the Afar region remains a harsh and unforgiving landscape. Daytime temperatures often soar to 130 degrees Fahrenheit (54 degrees Celsius), cooling only to a \u201cbalmy\u201d 95 degrees (35 degrees Celsius) at night. Yet, for scientists like Ebinger, it\u2019s a natural laboratory that offers unparalleled insights into the forces that shape our planet.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has been called Dante\u2019s inferno,\u201d she said. But for those willing to brave the heat, it\u2019s a window into the future of Earth\u2019s geology \u2014 a future where Africa is no longer one continent, but two; split by a new ocean.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared in February 2025 and was updated with new information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since 2005, a 35-mile-long crack known as the East African Rift has been forming. In the scorching deserts…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":634704,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[299602,64,63,307325,5036,38011,128],"class_list":{"0":"post-634703","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-afar-region","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-east-african-rift","12":"tag-ocean","13":"tag-red-sea","14":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=634703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}