PLN 20

What matters in the article "Giant Crack in Africa Will Create a New Ocean" co-written by the LifeScience staff, is that there could be a new ocean. The article states that according to scientists, what is happening in the desert of Ethiopia, is also what happens on the bottom of the ocean. Therefore, they have determined that the 35-mile rift through the desert will create a new sea. According to the article, it is the African and Arabian tectonic plates spreading apart that is causing the crack through the Afar desert. The crack began in 2005 and is causing great excitement in the scientific world. The scientists that wrote the article say that this is what is theorized to be happening on the bottom of the ocean, but seeing as they do not have the technology to reach the bottom of the ocean, they are very excited to use this new site as a "unique and superb ocean-ridge laboratory." Doing this will break a lot of new ground in the world of oceanography. There is also another subject, brought up by the rift, which has the religious world excited. Scientists say that this is also "splitting the Red Sea." They claim that volcanic activity under the Red Sea is causing it to split, and alarmingly fast. According to the article, there is also a rift like this under the Red Sea, and volcanic activity under the surface is filling the rift with hardened lava, or magma rock. This is raising the rift and splitting the sea into two bodies of water, but then more shifting of the tectonic plates lowers the rift again, back to one body of water. The scientists say that this is an extremely fast process and could happen and be over with in a span of just three days. This is affecting the religious world because it has proven that maybe there were other factors at play when Moses split the sea and saved the Jews. This is obviously something to watch closely, because if one of these rifts showed up under a city or poisonous gas was released from within the Earth, who knows what the consequences would be. Anyway you look at it, this new rift, whether it creates an ocean or not, will cause some great new discoveries.