[billorites]

Scientists Probe Africa's Rift Valley Break-Up

Women and minorities hardest hit.

[DakotaGator]

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.

The UN Science Commission scoffed at speculation that the research could actually cause the split to occur now.

Elsewhere in the news, apparant mass migrations are occuring from the entire Rift Valley. Cause is unknown.

[Verginius Rufus]

The Red Sea is an ocean?

[Tacis]

I'm sure that Gore, Pelosi, Streisand, and the New York Times would tell you that the shift was caused by the Bush administration's lack of funding and cconcern for the interests of the wealthy.

[Billy_bob_bob]

These scientists are either very brave or very foolish. I wonder how many will lose their lives to the chaos and destruction that is so common in Africa.

[xJones]

Sometimes these attempted continental break-ups don't work. The Rio Grande Rift that goes through Albuquerque, New Mexico is a fine example of a failed continental rift - fortunately.

[Fractal Trader]

They'd better be careful! The whole earth could fall apart if they don't know what they're doing... TheCore

[scouse]

Operation EAGLE or the Ethiopia Afar Geo-Scientific Lithospheric Experiment (EAGLE).

I wonder who came up with this name

[LiteKeeper]

read later

[Axenolith]

Site for more in depth info...

http://geollab.jmu.edu/vageol/vahist/riftmodel.html

[StopGlobalWhining]

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.

If only Bush had signed the Kyoto Treaty this crisis in the Afar Triangle could have been avoided. As long as SUV's remain legal, and Americans with 4% of the earth's population continue to consume 25% of it's resources, the separation of this rift valley will only worsen, and more Africans will suffer and die.