A huge fissure stretching several kilometers long and tens of meters wide that suddenly appeared recently in southwestern Kenya is believed to be evidence that the African continent is beginning to split in two.
The aforementioned crack is still growing, causing part of the Nairobi – Narok highway to be destroyed, along with seismic activity in the area.
A view of the giant rift that cuts across a major highway in southwestern Kenya.
Earth is a constantly changing planet, although many of those changes are invisible to the naked eye. The displacement of geological plates is an example. However, the appearance of the giant rift in Kenya is very clear evidence of the tremendous movement of geological activity, raising questions about how the African continent began to split in two. long-standing predictions of scientists.
Over the billions of years of its formation, the Earth’s lithosphere has broken up into a large number of tectonic plates. These plates are not stationary, but move relative to each other at different speeds, “sliding” across the soft, viscous texture.
What exactly is the mechanism behind these motions is controversial, but is likely to be related to convection currents in the mantle and forces arising from the junction between tectonic plates.
These forces do not simply shift tectonic plates, but also cause them to fracture, creating cracks and possibly leading to the creation of new plate boundaries. The East African Rift is an example of where this is happening.
Location of the East African Rift on a map of the continent.
The East African Rift Zone stretches over 3,000km from the Gulf of Aden in the north to Zimbabwe in the south, splitting the present African tectonic plate into two unbalanced parts, the Somali Plate and the Nubian Plate.
This is an unusually active rift zone and is mostly located under the ocean. Geologists have long predicted that in about 50 million years Africa will be split in two by the East African Rift.
Geological activity along the eastern arm of the rift valley, along Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania, became more apparent when a large rift suddenly appeared in southwestern Kenya.
Illustration of seismic activity causing faults in the Earth’s crust.
“The Great Rift Valley is going to split Africa in two. With what’s going on, we’ve calculated that the African continent is splitting in the Somali region at a rate of 2.5cm a years. In the near future this will continue to happen, we will have a separate sea between Somalia and the rest of Africa,” Kenya geologist David Ahede told the local Daily Nation newspaper.
Mr. Ahede said that the acceleration of tectonic motion of the Earth’s plates is mainly stimulated by volcanic activity near the tectonic plate. Geologists believe that Africa’s rate of separation is accelerated because of the activity of a volcano called Suswa located in the Great Rift Valley.
Visualization of the African continent after it splits in two.
In Earth’s history, an example of a place where a tectonic plate split occurs is in the South Atlantic Ocean, which was formed by the fault between South America and Africa around 138. million years ago – later discovered by scientists when they noticed that the coastlines of these two continents fit together like on a jigsaw puzzle.
In the meantime, many locals do not miss the opportunity to take pictures with the giant crack to “show off” on social networks.