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The Red Sea is parting again, but this time Moses doesn’t have a hand in it. Satellite images show that the Arabian tectonic plate and the African plate are moving away from each other, stretching the Earth's crust and widening the southern end of the Red Sea, scientists reported in this week's issue of journal Nature. Last September, a series of earthquakes started splitting the planet's surface along a 37-mile section of the East African Rift in Afar, Ethiopia. Using the images gathered by the European Space Agency's Envisat radar satellite, researchers looked at satellite data before and after these...

Normally new rivers, seas and mountains are born in slow motion. The Afar Triangle near the Horn of Africa is another story. A new ocean is forming there with staggering speed -- at least by geological standards. Africa will eventually lose its horn. Geologist Dereje Ayalew and his colleagues from Addis Ababa University were amazed -- and frightened. They had only just stepped out of their helicopter onto the desert plains of central Ethiopia when the ground began to shake under their feet. The pilot shouted for the scientists to get back to the helicopter. And then it happened: the...

Scientists: Fissure Could Become New Ocean By ANTHONY MITCHELL, Associated Press Writer Sat Dec 10,12:45 AM ET ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - Ethiopian, American and European researchers have observed a fissure in a desert in the remote northeast that could be the "birth of a new ocean basin," scientists said Friday. Researchers from Britain, France, Italy and the U.S. have been observing the 37-mile long fissure since it split open in September in the Afar desert and estimate it will take a million years to fully form into an ocean, said Dereje Ayalew, who leads the team of 18 scientists studying...

A rift that opened in Africa after a massive earthquake last September could be the beginning of a new Ocean, scientists say. The crack in the ground appeared along a fault line in the Afar desert in Ethiopia. The crack is heading for the Red Sea. If it makes it that far, it would carve a new ocean that would separate Eritrea and part of Ethiopia (both of which lie on the Arabian plate) from the rest of the continent, creating a new island.Satellite data collected since the quake shows that the rift is widening at an unprecedented rate, according...

The Manda-Hararo rift in the Afar region of Ethiopia. Credit: DavidMPyle / CC BY-SA 4.0 =================================================================== A steady underground pulse has been discovered beneath East Africa, where researchers believe a new ocean is gradually forming. The rhythmic movement was detected in the Afar region of Ethiopia, a geological hotspot where three giant sections of the Earth’s crust—the Arabian, Nubian, and Somalian plates—are slowly pulling apart. The site, known as the Afar Triple Junction, is one of few places on Earth where the process of continental breakup can be observed on land. As the plates drift in different directions, the ground...

Deep beneath the thick ice that covers East Antarctica, scientists are revealing new discoveries about a mystery that has been hidden beneath the continent’s frozen exterior for half a billion years. According to newly published research, clues to the formation of a mountain range the size of the Alps tucked away below Antarctic ice are being revealed, offering geologists a unique glimpse at the processes behind their formation. The Gamburtsev Subglacial Mountains, initially discovered by Soviet scientists during an expedition in 1958, have puzzled researchers for decades. Now, these massive features beneath Antarctica’s frozen surface, which were formed long ago...

Geologists have uncovered a long-lost continental fragment buried beneath the thick ice of Greenland, a discovery that offers new insight into the ancient forces that shaped Earth’s surface. This previously unrecognized microcontinent, formed tens of millions of years ago, is believed to be part of a complex tectonic rift system between Greenland and Canada. The finding not only redefines the geological map of the North Atlantic, but also deepens our understanding of plate tectonic reorganization, continental separation, and how fragments of ancient crust become stranded during the birth of new oceans. Rifting Forces Between Greenland and Canada The region separating...

A group of scientists, led by paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, an Emeritus Professor President of the Institute for the Study of Earth and Man at the Southern Methodist University Campus in Dallas, Texas, have made a significant discovery. The scientists found matching dinosaur footprints on two separate continents, South America and Africa. In Brazil and Cameroon, over 260 footprints were uncovered. These footprints show where dinosaurs once roamed freely on the two continents millions of years ago before South America and Africa drifted apart. Jacobs explained that the footprints were not only similar in age but also in their geological...

The Melanesian Boundary Plateau was built in four different volcanic phases ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Scientists have unraveled the mystery behind how a volcanic superstructure the size of Idaho formed beneath the Pacific Ocean. Called the Melanesian Border Plateau, a team of international researchers determined the more than 85,00-square-mile structure was created when dinosaurs ruled the Earth 145 to 66 million years ago and is still growing to this day. Researchers used seismic data, rock samples and computer models to identify four periods of volcanic eruptions deep beneath the surface that started 100 million years ago. The submerged structure was also found to...

A very brief video because I want to tell you about this story I learned from William Jason Morgan's obituary. It's a lovely story about how the process of scientific discovery sometimes takes unexpected turns.He looked for gravitational waves, but discovered something entirely different | 3:39Sabine Hossenfelder | 1.03M subscribers | 232,486 views | October 19, 2023her YouTube channel

(National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) During a recent expedition to the largely unexplored depths of the northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge, marine researchers stumbled upon something odd: tiny holes excavated in the sediment, all arranged in dozens of relatively straight lines. Holes on the sea floor wouldn't usually be too perplexing, but these were dotted in an incredibly neat and evenly spaced pattern. If not for the fact they're located roughly 2.5 kilometers (1.6 miles) below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, in the middle of nowhere, they could have been engineered by human hands. Researchers on board the US National Oceanic...

"Our new model for tectonic plates better explains the spatial distribution of 90 per cent of earthquakes and 80 per cent of volcanoes from the past two million years whereas existing models only capture 65 percent of earthquakes...." Dr. Derrick Hasterok, Lecturer, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Adelaide.

New models that show how the continents were assembled are providing fresh insights into the history of the Earth and will help provide a better understanding of natural hazards like earthquakes and volcanoes. "We looked at the current knowledge of the configuration of plate boundary zones and the past construction of the continental crust," said Dr Derrick Hasterok, Lecturer, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Adelaide who led the team that produced the new models. "The continents were assembled a few pieces at a time, a bit like a jigsaw, but each time the puzzle was finished it was cut...

In the 1960-70s, every geology textbook was rewritten, as the previous verities were DESTROYED! Alfred Wegner (1880-1930) was, posthumously, proven correct, in the face of the academia that scoffed at him. What was needed, was the mechanism, that the technology of WW2 provided.

Think of the red bluffs and cliffs of the Grand Canyon as Earth's history textbook, explained Barra Peak, lead author of the new study and a graduate student in geological sciences at CU Boulder. If you scale down the canyon's rock faces, you can jump back almost 2 billion years into the planet's past. But that textbook is also missing pages: In some areas, more than 1 billion years' worth of rocks have disappeared from the Grand Canyon without a trace. It's a mystery that goes back a long way. John Wesley Powell, the namesake of today's Lake Powell, first...

A group of University of Wyoming professors and students has identified an unusual belt of igneous rocks that stretches for over 2,000 miles from British Columbia, Canada, through Idaho, Montana, Nevada, southeast California and Arizona to Sonora, Mexico. “Geoscientists usually associate long belts of igneous rocks with chains of volcanoes at subduction zones, like Mount Shasta, Mount Hood, Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainer,” says Jay Chapman, an assistant professor in UW’s Department of Geology and Geophysics. “What makes this finding so interesting and mysterious is that this belt of igneous rocks is located much farther inland, away from the...

An intense temblor in Mexico was just the latest example of an enigmatic type of earthquake with highly destructive potential On September 7, 2017, a magnitude 8.2 earthquake struck southern Mexico, killing dozens and injuring hundreds. While earthquakes are common enough in the region, this powerful event wasn’t any run-of-the-mill tremor. That’s because part of the roughly 37-mile-thick tectonic plate responsible for the quake completely split apart, as revealed by a new study in Nature Geoscience. This event took place in a matter of tens of seconds, and it coincided with a gargantuan release of energy. “If you think of...

It's long been held that North America's rugged and mountainous west was formed by the movement of the undersea Farallon plate, and that the process was roughly similar to the way groceries pile up at the end of a supermarket conveyor belt. Now however, a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature argues that the process involved not just one but several plates that remain hidden deep within in the Earth's mantle. Scientists at Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich and the British Columbia Geological Survey used earthquake shockwaves, or seismic tomography, to create a three-dimensional map of these massive plate...

Present-day nautilus shells almost invariably show thirty daily growth lines (give or take a couple) between the major partitions, or septa, in their shells. Paleontologists find fewer and fewer growth lines between septa in progressively older fossils. 420 million years ago, when the moon circled the earth once every nine days, the very first nautiloids show only nine growth lines between septa. The moon was closer to the earth and revolved about it faster, and the earth itself was rotating faster on its axis than it is now. The day had only twenty-one hours, and the moon loomed enormous in...

A team of geologists at the University of Houston College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics believes they have found the lost plate in northern Canada by using existing mantle tomography images—similar to a CT scan of the earth's interior. The findings, published in Geological Society of America Bulletin, could help geologists better predict volcanic hazards as well as mineral and hydrocarbon deposits. "Volcanoes form at plate boundaries, and the more plates you have, the more volcanoes you have," said Jonny Wu, assistant professor of geology in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. "Volcanoes also affect climate change. So, when...