what is the planet telling us
https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/wonder/scientists-excited-by-huge-new-zealand-sinkhole/vi-AAwSfQo
vid at link
An enormous sinkhole appeared in New Zealand after record amounts of rainfall revealed thousands of years of the region's volcanic past. Sam Kelway of TVNZ reports
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3SDi0Tw8MM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDsxHYO_Tqk
Giant Cracks Forming in the Earth
A giant crack in the Earth tore through Kenya — and scientists say it's proof Africa will break apartGeologists believe the formation of the crack is just the latest sign that Africa will likely break into two — although it might take about 50 million years for it to happen
(https://nationalpostcom.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/screen-shot-2018-04-04-at-12-29-33-pm-copy.png)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO7s5zIhX6k
QuoteA massive crack tore through several kilometres of Kenya last week, causing a highway that leads into Nairobi to collapse, may be the latest sign that Africa will one day split into two, according to geologists.
Measured at about 15 metres deep and 19 metres across, the crack in the Earth was spotted after a period of heavy rainfall. Geologist David Adede told the Daily Nation, a Kenyan newspaper, that the fault line had likely already been there and was simply filled with volcanic ash from the nearby Mt. Longomot. The heavy rainfall washed the ash away, exposing the deep fissure in the ground.
Ben Andrews, a geologist with the Smithsonian, took the theory one step further.
"We're seeing a crack that in all likelihood formed over many thousands of years or hundreds of thousands of years," Andrews told CBS.
Geologists like Andrews believe the formation of the crack is just the latest sign that Africa will likely break into two — although it might take about 50 million years for it to happen.
The split would tear Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania and half of Ethiopia away from the rest of the continent. These countries are located in what geologists refer to as the Great Rift Valley — a region spanning 6,000 km from Mozambique to the Middle East, where tectonic plates are constantly moving apart. Kenya, in particular, is located on top of an area where the Somali plate and the Nubian plate in the Earth are in the process of rifting.
The movement of the plates is stretching the Earth's crust so thin that the area is already beginning to split apart, as evidenced by the crack that appeared last week. The northern region of Kenya will likely be the first region to break apart, University of London researcher Lucia Perez Diaz wrote in the Conversation, because it is coated with volcanic rocks.
But not all scientists are convinced the crack was the result of tectonic rifts. While geologist Wendy Bohon told CBS that she also believes Africa in the process of splitting in two, she said the formation of the crack was more likely caused by heavy rain storms.
"I think it's an Earth fissure, the same sort of thing that you see in Arizona after heavy rain storms," she said. "They're the result of heavier torrential rains that come and wash away large portions of the dirt in the ground. To me it looks pretty cut and dry. It wasn't a result of tectonics, it was the result of the weather."
Sections of the crack that run through main roads have since been filled concrete and rocks.
http://nationalpost.com/news/world/a-giant-crack-in-the-earth-tore-through-kenya-and-scientists-say-its-proof-africa-will-break-apart
I don't buy the water did this theory because water flowing leaves specific rills and mud fans at the bottom... this crack is sharp, not water worn
A huge crack provides evidence that Africa is slowly splitting into twoQuoteBy Laura Geggel April 7
A piece of East Africa is expected to break off the main continent in tens of millions of years. And if you need any proof, look no further than Kenya's Rift Valley, where a giant, gaping tear opened up following heavy rains and seismic activity, according to Face2Face Africa.
The enormous crack in southwestern Kenya appeared March 19 and measures about 50 feet wide and several miles along, Face2Face Africa and other news sources reported. Moreover, it's still growing longer.
The rift is probably a sign of things to come as the plate tectonics under Africa rearrange themselves. The majority of Africa sits on top of the African Plate. However, a long, vertical piece of eastern Africa lies on top of the Somali Plate. This juncture where the two plates meet is known as the East African Rift, which stretches an astonishing 1,800 miles, or about the distance from Denver to Boston.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/a-huge-crack-provides-evidence-that-africa-is-slowly-splitting-into-two/2018/04/06/0b9a5144-3749-11e8-acd5-35eac230e514_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.79262df54e5c
So in this report the key point is;
Moreover, it's still growing longer.Here is a map of the two plates:
(https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/960x0/https%3A%2F%2Fblogs-images.forbes.com%2Ftrevornace%2Ffiles%2F2018%2F04%2Feast-african-rift-1-1200x791.jpg)
(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/NQ0hbq6Dmsc/maxresdefault.jpg)
(http://52.24.98.51/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/kenya-rift-split-8m.jpg)
(https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/180404121228-rift-valley-kenya-0328-restricted-exlarge-169.jpg)
(https://cbsnews3.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r/2018/04/03/31d58dd9-df66-49ea-ad3f-e18084dca24c/resize/620x/276eeea55b1d3ef618b52f0e69ab556b/chip-reid-headline-material-frame-759.jpg)
Giant Crack in Africa Will Create a New Ocean
By Live Science Staff | November 2, 2009 12:23pm ETThis one was from 2005... along the same fault, but in Ethiopia
(https://38khwh2rk0dicbvwq47l51h1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/parting-of-crust-1-768x432.jpg)
The rift in Afar, Ethiopia, that researchers say will eventually become a new ocean.
Credit: University of Rochester
QuoteA 35-mile rift in the desert of Ethiopia will likely become a new ocean eventually, researchers now confirm.
The crack, 20 feet wide in spots, opened in 2005 and some geologists believed then that it would spawn a new ocean. But that view was controversial, and the rift had not been well studied.
A new study involving an international team of scientists and reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters finds the processes creating the rift are nearly identical to what goes on at the bottom of oceans, further indication a sea is in the region's future.
QuoteThe same rift activity is slowly parting the Red Sea, too.
Using newly gathered seismic data from 2005, researchers reconstructed the event to show the rift tore open along its entire 35-mile length in just days. Dabbahu, a volcano at the northern end of the rift, erupted first, then magma pushed up through the middle of the rift area and began "unzipping" the rift in both directions, the researchers explained in a statement today.
"We know that seafloor ridges are created by a similar intrusion of magma into a rift, but we never knew that a huge length of the ridge could break open at once like this," said Cindy Ebinger, professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Rochester and co-author of the study.
The result shows that highly active volcanic boundaries along the edges of tectonic ocean plates may suddenly break apart in large sections, instead of in bits, as the leading theory held. And such sudden large-scale events on land pose a much more serious hazard to populations living near the rift than would several smaller events, Ebinger said.
"The whole point of this study is to learn whether what is happening in Ethiopia is like what is happening at the bottom of the ocean where it's almost impossible for us to go," says Ebinger. "We knew that if we could establish that, then Ethiopia would essentially be a unique and superb ocean-ridge laboratory for us. Because of the unprecedented cross-border collaboration behind this research, we now know that the answer is yes, it is analogous."
The African and Arabian plates meet in the remote Afar desert of Northern Ethiopia and have been spreading apart in a rifting process — at a speed of less than 1 inch per year — for the past 30 million years. This rifting formed the 186-mile Afar depression and the Red Sea. The thinking is that the Red Sea will eventually pour into the new sea in a million years or so. The new ocean would connect to the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, an arm of the Arabian Sea between Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula and Somalia in eastern Africa.
Atalay Ayele, professor at the Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia, led the investigation, gathering seismic data with help from neighboring Eritrea and Ghebrebrhan Ogubazghi, professor at the Eritrea Institute of Technology, and from Yemen with the help of Jamal Sholan of the National Yemen Seismological Observatory Center.
https://www.livescience.com/10592-giant-crack-africa-create-ocean.html
Jan 16, 2017 25.8K
Huge Earth crack opens up in South Africa
(https://cdn.disclose.tv/sites/default/files/styles/article_image/public/img/post/2017/01/16/huge-earth-crack-opens-up-in-south-africa-137448.jpg?itok=wd2GiwLD)
(http:///%3E%3Cbr%20/%3ESouth%20Africa%20has%20been%20beset%20by%20problems%20with%20sinkholes%20for%20at%20least%20fifty%20years,%20but%20the%20frequency%20of%20the%20terrifying%20natural%20phenomenon%20has%20been%20increasing%20in%20recent%20years%20with%20almost%20three%20thousand%20incidents%20being%20reported%20in%20the%20past%20twelve%20months.)
https://cdn.disclose.tv/sites/default/files/styles/inline/public/img/inline/2017/01/16/huge-earth-crack-opens-up-in-south-africa-313116-1.jpg?itok=dhxH--8k
https://www.disclose.tv/huge-earth-crack-opens-up-in-south-africa-313116
All these reporters are confusing sinkholes with cracks :P The fact that you can see the crack continue up the hills is telling
The Red Sea Parts Again
By Sara Goudarzi | July 19, 2006 09:00am ET(https://img.purch.com/h/1400/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5saXZlc2NpZW5jZS5jb20vaW1hZ2VzL2kvMDAwLzAwMy82MTYvb3JpZ2luYWwvMDYwNzE5X2FmYXJfY3JhY2tfMDIuanBn)
Aerial photo of the cracks and faults that formed in September, 2005. These cracks formed above the zone where molten rock rose into the plate, reaching to within approximately 1.2 miles of the surface.
Credit: Julie Rowland, University of Auckland.
QuoteThe Red Sea is parting again, but this time Moses doesn't have a hand in it.
Satellite images show that the Arabian tectonic plate and the African plate are moving away from each other, stretching the Earth's crust and widening the southern end of the Red Sea, scientists reported in this week's issue of journal Nature.
Last September, a series of earthquakes started splitting the planet's surface along a 37-mile section of the East African Rift in Afar, Ethiopia.
QuoteUsing the images gathered by the European Space Agency's Envisat radar satellite, researchers looked at satellite data before and after these activities.
Earth-shattering shift
Over a period of three weeks, the crust on the sides of the rift moved apart by 26 feet and magma—enough to fill a football stadium more than 2,000 times—was injected along a vertical crack, forming a new crust.
"We think that the crust and mantle melt slowly at depths greater than 10 kilometers [6 miles], where it is hotter, forming magma (molten rock)," said Tim J Wright, study co-author, a Royal Society University Research Fellow. "This magma rises through the crust because it is less dense than the surrounding rock."
The magma collects in magma chambers at depths of 3 to 5 kilometers [1.9 to 3 miles] where the density is the same as the crustal rocks, Wright explained. "Slowly, the pressure has been building up in these chambers until last September when it finally cracked, breaking the crust along a vertical crack. The magma was then injected into this crack."
The intrusion of magma into the gap, rather than the cracking of the crust, is responsible for segmentation of continental drifts.
This is the first rifting episode to have occurred since 1970 and the largest single rip in the Earth's continental crust during the satellite-monitoring era.
"We knew about the steady rifting process in Afar, as Arabia moves away from Africa across the rift," Wright said. "And we knew that occasionally the strain that builds up slowly over centuries is released suddenly in rifting episodes. We did not know how big the deformation could be."
Slow drift
For the past 30 million years Africa and Arabia have been going through a rifting process, the same one that formed the Red Sea. In this amount of time, the 186-mile- wide Afar depression formed.
"The ground is continually moving—much more rapidly now than before the rifting episode," Wright told LiveScience. "On average, the two sides move apart at about 2 centimeters per year [0.8 inches per year]. But, as this event demonstrates, the motion is episodic and jerky. This poses considerable hazard to the local inhabitants, which is higher for the next few years."
This latest split, added to the long-term rifting process, which is tearing the northeast of Ethiopia and Eritrea from the rest of Africa, could eventually create a huge new sea. Although such processes could take millions of years to occur, this event has given scientists an unprecedented opportunity to monitor the rupture in real time.
https://www.livescience.com/4169-red-sea-parts.html
Nature carves a giant fissure in a farm near Rotorua after a weekend of heavy rain video
BENN BATHGATE
Last updated 09:35, May 2 2018QuoteHad Gabriel Lafalla been riding his bike through the early morning dark a few inches to the right, he'd probably have been swallowed by the Earth.
That's because the farm assistant had just discovered a huge crack that has opened up on the dairy farm where he works, roughly 16km outside of Rotorua.
The crack, measuring over 150m long and at places 20m wide, and almost as deep, was discovered by the Argentinian farm assistant about 5am on Sunday.
(https://resources.stuff.co.nz/content/dam/images/1/p/n/7/3/p/image.related.StuffLandscapeSixteenByNine.620x349.1pn2c1.png/1525210544404.jpg)
Farm assistant Phillip Setters takes a look at the massive crack.
It came amid a weekend of heavy weather that saw Rotorua record its highest ever hourly rainfall rate with 51.8mm falling between 10 and 11am on Sunday.
By later that day flooding in nearby Ngongataha prompted Rotorua Mayor Steve Chadwick to call a state of emergency.
(https://resources.stuff.co.nz/content/dam/images/1/p/n/7/3/n/image.related.StuffLandscapeSixteenByNine.620x349.1pn2c1.png/1525210544404.jpg)
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/103532689/nature-carves-a-giant-fissure-in-a-farm-near-rotorua-after-a-weekend-of-heavy-rain