Posted on 09/17/2013 3:29:09 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
The Afar Rift in Ethiopia is marked by enormous gashes that signal the breakup of the African continent and the beginnings of a new ocean basin, scientists think.
The fractures appear eerily similar to seafloor spreading centers, the volcanic ridges that mark the boundaries between two pieces of oceanic crust. Along the ridges, lava bubbles up and new crust is created, slowly widening the ocean basin.
But a look deep beneath the Afar Rift reveals the birth announcements may be premature. "It's not as close to fully formed seafloor spreading as we thought," said Kathy Whaler, a geophysicist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
Whaler and her colleagues have spotted 120 cubic miles (500 cubic kilometers) of magma sitting in the mantle under the Afar Rift. Hot liquids like magma like to rise, so the discovery is a conundrum.
"We didn't expect this, because magma wants to pop up like a cork in water; it's too buoyant compared to the surrounding medium in the mantle," Whaler told LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.
Models predict that at spreading ridges, magma should sit just under the rifts, in the crust. That's what geoscientists see in the oceans, at places like the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the Juan de Fuca Ridge. But not only is the giant pool at Afar extremely deep, but it is also mostly below the sleeping Badi volcano, many miles west of the scene of a 2005 series of underground magma intrusions, Whaler said.
...
The findings, published Sept. 5 in the journal Nature Geoscience, add a new twist to the Afar Rift puzzle. Thanks to intense international attention — from scientists intrigued by the 2005 intrusions — the region is one of the best-studied spreading centers in the world. ..
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
One day after Art Bell gets back on radio? Hmmmmmmm
So, it will be 50 mil years instead of 5 mil years?
Whatever it is, must be Bush’s fault.
The earthquake fault that runs by Ethiopia goes right up through Israel ...(indeed, it is a major earth rift)... Maybe this is how the good Lord will arrange a cleared building site for the Third Temple...
smile
smile
smile
Deccan Traps come immediately to mind as an Eric commented to the article. Talk about global warming potential. I have thought the Deccan Traps contributed to the dinosaur’s demise. I’ve also been told that’s crazy. :-)
A rather catastrophic ping.
Roseanne Barr fell in?
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satan is coming to reclaim his son- Hussein.
We can only hope...
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No, no, no.. The article is about hot magma... NOT hot gas ;^)
This is what you do. Tie the magma into the pyramids and then get that weird hair guy to say, I am not saying it was aliens, but it was aliens.
Oh. The "blob" part threw me off.
I have two theories on the Deccan Traps which coincide in time with the dinosaur extinctions.
1) The giant meteor which hit Yucatan caused such a shock that it ruptured the earth on the other side. Kind of like a bullet to the brain.
2) Chattergee is right, there was a giant meteor, much larger than the Yucatan one which hit off the coast of Mumbai also around the same time.
Aye.
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