Now, a new study published Monday in the journal Frontiers in Earth Science<\/a> goes one step further. \u201cWe have the first geochemical data from this area,\u201d said R\u016bta Karolyt\u0117, who led the study when she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Oxford in England. \u201cThat\u2019s quite a different line of evidence that really strengthens the idea that we have rift activity in the area.\u201d<\/p>\n Studying a new continental rift would help answer one of the most fundamental questions in tectonics.<\/p>\n \u201cHow does a new plate boundary begin? Mature plate boundaries are easy to recognize. The earliest stages are much more subtle,\u201d said Estella Atekwana, a distinguished professor of Earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Davis, who did not take part in the study.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the Kafue Rift is part of a newborn plate boundary, it gives us a rare opportunity to study the birth of a plate boundary before volcanism, large earthquakes, and major surface deformation have overprinted the original conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n Clues to a new tectonic plate<\/p>\n To gather the evidence, Karolyt\u0117 and her colleagues collected samples from hot springs and geothermal wells in Zambia that have naturally appeared above the suspected rift. \u201cThere\u2019s hot water bubbling up to the surface, and we sampled the gas that\u2019s coming up from that,\u201d said Karolyt\u0117, who is currently a principal product scientist at UK-based Snowfox Discovery, a natural hydrogen exploration company.<\/p>\n The researchers were looking mainly at the ratio between two types of helium \u2014 helium-3 and helium-4. The team hunted for a telltale sign that the springs and wells had a connection with Earth\u2019s mantle<\/a>, the layer sandwiched between the crust and the core that\u2019s hundreds of miles thick. \u201cWe found more helium-3 than you\u2019d normally find in the crust, which is generally a signal of mantle fluids coming up into the water,\u201d Karolyt\u0117 added.<\/p>\n The result is only preliminary because the samples come from just six sites in a highly concentrated area. But the researchers also sampled two hot springs about 60 miles (95 kilometres) from the suspected rift and didn\u2019t find a similar increase in the helium-3 ratio.<\/p>\n Since material from the mantle can reach the surface as tectonic plates stretch and begin to split apart, the study team believes this new geochemical data may serve as an early signal hinting at the formation of a new plate boundary.<\/p>\n Tectonic plates<\/a> are gigantic slabs of solid rock ranging in size from a few hundred to thousands of miles across, with a thickness of up to about 120 miles (190 kilometres). Ever since these plates developed early in Earth\u2019s history, they have been sliding over the mantle at a speed comparable to the growth rate of fingernails. About 200 million years ago, the shifting plates started to separate a giant landmass called Pangea into today\u2019s continents. The plates are still moving<\/a>, and that movement drives geological processes such as earthquakes and the formation of volcanoes.<\/p>\n The boundaries between plates are mostly under the oceans, and they can slide past each other, crush together or drift apart. The boundaries are also the areas where most of the earthquakes and volcanic activity happen.<\/p>\n An active, developing rift can turn into a tectonic plate boundary \u2014 but not necessarily. \u201cThese rifts often start and stop, or they can spread a little bit and stop again. It\u2019s hard to predict what will happen,\u201d Karolyt\u0117 said.<\/p>\n Africa already has a well-developed rift that\u2019s tens of millions of years old. The East African Rift has several volcanoes and is seismically active. However, it would take a long time for the new rift to develop in such a way and then turn into a plate boundary. \u201cAt the fastest, it could happen in a couple of million years. At the slowest, it could take 10 or 20 million years,\u201d said study coauthor Mike Daly, a visiting professor in Earth sciences at the University of Oxford.<\/p>\n \u201cThe southern part of Africa would break off, but before that, you would start to see a lot more earthquakes, and some volcanic activity with lava flowing out. You would start to have deep rifts, and water would start to stagnate in it, so you\u2019d get lakes as you get in East Africa today, and ultimately you\u2019d get the sea,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n In the much nearer term, however, Zambia could economically benefit by harnessing energy \u2014 geothermal plants are emerging in the area. The landlocked nation could possibly even collect the helium, which is in high demand and has several applications in medicine and the tech industry.<\/p>\n To confirm the findings, the researchers are collecting more gas from a wider geographical area along the suspected rift, and they are already working on a new study with broadened results.<\/p>\n Answering fundamental questions<\/p>\n Folarin Kolawole, an assistant professor in the department of Earth and environmental sciences of Columbia University in New York who wasn\u2019t involved with the study, thinks the findings are novel and exciting because they provide a \u201cstrong confirmation\u201d that there is direct upward flow of fluids from the mantle to the surface through newly forming rift zones.<\/p>\n \u201cThe key significance of a new plate boundary in southwestern Africa is that we now have an established pathway for the continent to break up from eastern Africa all the way through Botswana and Namibia to the Atlantic Ocean,\u201d he added in an email.<\/p>\n The number of samples is limited, but the results are still significant, according to UC Davis\u2019 Atekwana. \u201cThey provide strong geochemical evidence that the Kafue Rift is active at depth, even though magma has not reached the surface,\u201d she wrote in an email.<\/p>\n Atekwana added, however, that more evidence along the whole proposed boundary is required to determine whether the mantle\u2019s helium signal is continuous or only local. \u201cThis is one important line of evidence, not the final word. It supports the hypothesis of early-stage rifting, but confirming a new plate boundary requires a full plate-boundary-scale test,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cThis does not mean Africa is splitting apart tomorrow; these processes unfold over millions of years. But scientifically, it would be like catching a plate boundary in the act of being born.\u201d<\/p>\n By Jacopo Prisco, CNN<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sub-Saharan Africa could split up in a few million years, and scientists believe they might be witnessing the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":667826,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[712,49,48,66],"class_list":["post-667825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-apple-news","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=667825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667825\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/667826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=667825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=667825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=667825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/VQE2YFXSIFD4NKGKN47AVXPMWA.JPG\")
Plate boundaries An aerial view shows the Gwisho hot springs and the southern Kafue Rift fault zone, where researchers say a new continental rift could be forming. (P. Vivien-Neal\/Kalahari Geo-Energy & M. C. Daly\/University of Oxford, UK via CNN Newsource) An economic benefit<\/p>\n