'You will not see many changes in the human scale. You will feel earthquakes, you will see that volcanoes burst, but you will not see the ocean penetrating in our lives. '
The divorce stems from the East African gorge system, a gorge of 2,000 miles that formed at least 22 million years ago where the big lakes of the continent live.
This region is also the home of two tectonic records, the Somalis and Nubian, who are actively riding each other.
The lithosphere of the earth, formed by the crust and the upper part of the mantle, is divided into different tectonic plates. But the mechanisms behind the movements still have to be discovered.
Some researchers speculate that the mechanism is slow, circular movements of partially melted rock caused by heat rising from the core of the earth.
Anyway, the movement of plates is what happens in the East African gorge system.
“There are slip and mistakes that create earthquake activity, along with visible signs of active volcanoes,” said MacDonald.
'In recent years, the most important breakthroughs have been finding out exactly where the branches of this gaps system are going.
The divorce stems from the East African gorge system, a gap of 2,000 miles that formed at least 22 million years ago where the big lakes of the continent live. A gap also appeared in Kenya in 2018.
Scientists have long predicted that Africa will split into two, so that a new continent with Somalia and half of Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania will be formed,
“The northern part was reasonably well understood, going through Djibouti and going to Kenya, but from there went to the south, people really had very little idea.”
Recent studies have used sensors such as satellite -gravity data and seismic scans to understand what is happening underground.
Former NASA and Space Force Consultant Alexandra Deoten explained to her Astro Alexandra Instagram -channel, 'East -Africa is located on the Somalia plate.
“The line along the border is the African big lakes. These are some of the greatest lakes on earth. This is 25 percent of all the non -frozen surface freshwater on the planet, and they already have about 10 percent of all fish species on the earth.
'The lakes were formed because East Africa separates from the rest of the continent. That Somali plate continues to go even further east, creating a gigantic rift valley here. It continues.
Researchers previously believed that the 'split' would last tens of millions of years, but MacDonald said that the New Ocean and the Continent would probably appear within one to five million years
“East Africa eventually becomes its new continent, separated from the rest of Africa by a New Ocean.”
Researchers previously believed that the 'split' would take 10s of millions of years, but MacDonald says that the split could happen within one to five million years.
A study published in Frontiers in Earth Science in 2024 emphasized how different parts of the East African gorge system show different levels of volcanic activity related to the split.
'The Uganda, Tanzania, Eastern and South Congo and Cape Valley cratons show shallow abnormalities with a high density that are housed by anomalies with low density that apparently come from deeper mantle depths, indicative of the lithosphere, with a certain degree of melt on the base, “the researchers wrote.
Cracks also appeared in Kenya in 2018 after heavy rainfall, with some locals reporting that the ground was shook at the time.
Researchers have suggested that such 'cracks' will continue to shape when the two plates break apart – where Madagascar also splits into two separate islands.
In a 2020 study by Virginia Tech, researchers suggested that New Oceans would be the first in the northern part of the gorge.
D. Sarah Stamps, a professor for the Ministry of Geosciences, said: “The speed of expansion is the fastest in the north, so we will first see New Oceans there form.”
“Most earlier studies suggested that the extension was located in narrow zones around microplate that move independently of the surrounding larger tectonic plates.”
