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Sun Jan 12, 7:05 AM ET
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ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Scientists studying Africa's slow-motion split along the Rift Valley have launched an experiment in Ethiopia to find out exactly why it is happening and whether a new ocean will form where the valley is now.
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Seventy-two U.S., European and Ethiopian scientists fanned out across the Horn of Africa country this weekend to conduct what they called Africa's largest ever seismic survey.
The "volcanic Rift Valley...could eventually break off to form an ocean like the Red Sea," said a statement from the project, known as Operation EAGLE or the Ethiopia Afar Geo-Scientific Lithospheric Experiment (EAGLE).
"If the separation does occur sometime in the future, the result would be enormously wide -- very similar to the one that initially separated Africa from America," the statement quoted British geophysicist Peter Maguire as saying.
Maguire said the Ethiopian section of the 2,200 mile valley was at the forefront of research on the topic because "it is the only place on earth where molten rock bubbles to the surface and a continental split is actively taking place."
Maguire said the timetable for the possible formation of an ocean was in the millions of years.
"Understanding how continents break apart is fundamental to understanding the plate tectonic processes that control the shape of the Earth's surface," the statement added, referring to enormous plates of rock that form the planet's crust.
The valley stretching from the Red Sea to Tanzania varies hugely in width -- between 30 km and 2000 km.
Scientists will drill holes along two 400 km axes running southwest along the Rift Valley from Afar in northeast Ethiopia.
Some 19 charges will be planted and detonated, with 1,000 highly-tuned instruments picking up seismic waves coming up from depths of almost 100 km.
Analysis of each wave caused by the explosions will indicate the types of rock found under the earth's surface and preliminary results will be available by July 2003, the scientists said.
