Scientists: Fissure Could Become New Ocean (Ethiopia)

news.yahoo.com ^ | Sat Dec 10,12:45 AM ET | By ANTHONY MITCHELL

[Tennessee_Bob]

I'm buying beachfront property now!!!

[adorno]

Now, wouldn't a new ocean cause the earth's weather patterns to change?

Where are the global-warming or global-cooling alarmists when you need them? Isn't it time that they started getting the UN and all countries together to try to do somethng about this new ocean? Maybe the world can get together and start filling in the new fault with dirt; and continue doing it for a million years.

This world and it's weather and it's volcanoes and it's earthquakes are too unpredictable and somebody needs to do something about it.

What about it, you greenies?

[kalee]

...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...The scientists plan to set up an observatory to watch the split and see how it develops.

I wonder who will pay for this observatory? Trying to imagine funding multiplied by a million years boggles the mind.

[Donald Rumsfeld Fan]

800,000 inch = 12.6 miles

[manwiththehands]

LOL! We have a winner! I'm singing along:

"Bush's Bush's Bush's Bush's fault fault"
"Bush's Bush's Bush's Bush's fault fault"

[joshhiggins]

800,000 inch = 12.6 miles

Thanks for finishing my math. 12.6 miles doesn't quite impress me as an Ocean, but then I'm not a scientist seeking money for a private retreat observatory.

[thoughtomator]

Don't, um, hold your breath...

[Oztrich Boy]

800,000 inch = 12.6 miles

Which is wide enough to allow sleeong lota as "ocean-front property"

[Bigg Red]

Yep! It's Bush's fault. And he's just doing it
1) to make more black people homeless like he did in NO, and
2) to find more oil for Cheney and Haliburton in the new ocean floor.

[Centurion2000]

Let's see, 0.8 inches a year times a million years equals an 800,000 inch wide ocean. Sounds pretty impressive.

12.6 miles is just such a huge ocean.

[StoneGiant]

Good news.

Now, when the oceans rise from the melting icecaps spawned by Global Warming the water will have someplace to go.

[commish]

OK..I am no math major here but something isn't computing here.

They say the Fissure opened in September and is now 13 feet wide. Then they say that the desert is separating at a rate of 0.8 inches a year.

Where I was raised , 13 feet in 2 months is a hell of a lot quicker than 0.8 INCHES a year.

[SunkenCiv]

[CougarGA7]

Guess I'll have to look at this from Afar.

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

Where I was raised , 13 feet in 2 months is a hell of a lot quicker than 0.8 INCHES a year.

You have to understand the science involved:

13 feet = 4m (meters)

0.8 inches = 2cm (centimeters)

4m/2 months = 2cm/year, for extremely small years

[tortoise]

OK..I am no math major here but something isn't computing here. They say the Fissure opened in September and is now 13 feet wide. Then they say that the desert is separating at a rate of 0.8 inches a year.

It is easy: the fissure is opening faster than the desert is spreading. This does not seem to make much sense if you think about it in two dimensions, but if there is any uplift or subsidence at the same time (and there is) you would expect the fissure to be opening much faster than the desert is separating. Simple trigonometry.

It is the opposite effect of how very small amounts of thermal expansion on bridges and similar can cause massive vertical buckling. Over a long enough distance, an inch of expansion or contraction in the plane will cause many feet of displacement if focused at one point.

[SunkenCiv]

Not sending a general distribution, merely updating.

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