This huge crack in Kenya could split Africa in two
A natural phenomenon has been intriguing to scientists and the population of Kenya. After torrential rainfall and earth tremors, a 15-meter-wide crack that is several kilometers long has opened the surface of the Earth. Scholars are claiming that the incident is the beginning of the division of Africa into two separate continents. But is that true? Discover more details about this terrifying natural phenomenon.
Origin
On March 18, 2018, a huge crack began to appear after heavy rainfall in the Great Rift Valley region, Kenya.
Where is the crack?
The crack, which until recently was covered with volcanic ash and hidden from view, is part of the Great Rift Valley.
Great Rift Valley
This is a low-lying region where tectonic plates split or move away from each other, according to National Geographic.
Direction
The growing crack in Kenya East Africa.
Natural phenomenon
According to a local newspaper, the Daily Nation, the huge fissure is the result of strong movement deep inside the Earth, which is leaving deep cracks in Narok county Kenya.
Wide-scale damage
Signs of damage were seen on the busy Mai Mahiu-Narok road. At one point, the crack measure 15m deep and over 20m wide, according to the Kenyan newspaper, the Daily Nation.
Victims of the disaster
According to the same publication, families who live near the crack are beginning to move. Local resident Mary Wambui, who is 72 years old, fears that staying there is like dicing with death.
Panic
Wambui was having dinner with her family on the day that the ground suddenly started to split under her feet, dividing her house into two.
Tremors
Another Kenyan man, Eliud Ngorogen Mbugua, also saw the ground open inside his house according to Reuters.
Fears spreads
Other cracks began to appear in the city's main road after weeks of heavy rain, flooding, and tremors in the ground according to Reuters.
Helplessness
Eliud Ngoroge Mbugua said his wife began to shout for neighbours to help them carry their belongings when they first noticed the cracks in their house, in the city of Mai Mahiu.
Homeless
In the following days, the house became so unstable that it had to be demolished.
Homeless
Reuters reported how the couple were still looking for somewhere to live.
History
In an interview with the Daily Nation, geologist David Adede said he believed that the fissure had previously been filled with volcanic ash from Mount Longonot, but that the heavy rains had washed that away, leaving the cracks exposed.
History
The expert said that the Great Rift valley had a history of tectonic and volcanic activity.
History
Adede said that the crack may have been tectonically inactive in recent times, but that movements deep in the Earth's surface have made this area into a 'zone of weakness' that stretched upwards to the planet's surface.
What are 'zones of weakness?'
'Zones of weakness' are fault lines and fissures which are usually filled with volcanic ash. In this case, the ash probably came from nearby Mount Longonot, explained the researcher to the Daily Nation.
Plate tectonics is the theory based on the argument that Earth's crust is divided into various plates which move around on top of the mantle, an inner layer of hot rock, which surrounds the planet's core.
A local network, NTV, reported that the crack had split the main road had already been filled in with a mixture of stones and concrete and would function again as before.
Temporary solution
Owing to the inevitability of the problems deep in the Earth's crust at the Suswa volcano, which is also in the Great Rift Valley, repair works by the Kenyan National Highways Authority will only offer a temporary solution.
In an article on the site Conversation, researcher Lucia Perez Diaz , from the University of London, said that the crack eventually divide Africa into two continents over the next tens of millions of years.
According to the scholar, the Great Rift Valley in East Africa is an area that extends over 3,000 km, from north to south between the Gulf of Aden, near Somalia and Zimbabwe.
As it is covered in volcanic rock, the specialist believes that the northern region could be the first to split apart.
Diaz believes that the fissure, which appeared in the southeast of Kenya, will split the African plate into two parts, the Nubia plate, to the west, and the Somali plate, to the east.
She also explained that as the lithosphere is subjected to horizontal forces, it gets stretched, becoming thinner until a rupture occurs, causing a fissure.
This process is accompanied by other natural phenomena such as volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. According to Lucia Perez Diaz, fissures and cracks are the first stages of a continent split which, if it happens fully, will create a new ocean.
Source from MSN News
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