Africa and Saudi Arabia are separate

Two giant pieces of lithosphere form Africa and Saudi Arabia are increasingly leaving each other.

The crack is 8m wide.
(Photo: BBC)

That is the result of a study by an international team of geologists from observing a volcanic earthquake and eruption in Ethiopia in September 2005.

The result of this long-term separation is that the northeastern part of Ethiopia and Eritrea will be torn out of Africa and eventually form a vast new sea.

The earthquake, located in the Afar desert at the southern end of Hong Hai, offers little volcanic material but is of great significance in terms of geological movement.

Based on images provided by the European Aviation Agency's Envisats, geologists had a first look at the event. An 8-meter-wide breakage has formed at the Dabbahu volcanic mass at Afar in just 3 weeks and is immediately filled with molten rock.

The shift has disturbed the fragments that make up the crack system in East Africa - the Y-shaped system with the original Great Rift valley and two branches of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

The breakdown has been going on for 30 million years and will take millions of years to finish. This is the largest fracture section ever observed so far.

MT