There is still a long way to go, but it will eventually be someone’s problem.
Separation is difficult, but even if it takes a long time, one of the world’s continents is undergoing this difficult process.
Current world maps are fairly accurate, but they will become outdated over time as continental drift occurs, with different parts of the world moving together and apart.
One place in the world where this phenomenon is particularly dramatic is the east coast of Africa, where two crustal plates on Earth are separating.
Experts believe that this separation will eventually give birth to a new continent separated from Africa.
On the one hand, it is expected that these continents will break apart in a few million years, but on the other hand, Professor Ken McDonald of the University of California warns that this separation could take one to five million years, not a few million years. . That may sound like a long time, but sooner than you might think, the professor told the Daily Mail that the separation will create not only new continents but also new oceans.
The ground has split open in places, and in a process that could take millions of years a new continent and ocean will form (Julie Rowland, University of Auckland)
He said: “It could also mean that the Indian Ocean will flow in and flood the current East African Rift Valley.”
“On the scale of human life, we won’t see a big change. You’ll feel earthquakes and see volcanic eruptions, but you won’t see the oceans eroding in our lifetimes.”
The rift stretches across Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya and Tanzania, and traces of it can already be seen in the country.
It’s already cracking, and in some places it’s only opening up a few millimeters a year, but in some parts of the continent the cracks in the ground are quite noticeable. While the actual dramatic breakup and creation of new continents and oceans is still at least a million years away, and we’ll all be dead by then, the effects Professor MacDonald spoke of, such as volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, will be felt for a long time to come. This is cause for concern.
The East African Rift is being pulled apart. (USGS)
According to the Geological Society of London, over time, the East African Rift Valley will “sink deeper and deeper, eventually allowing seawater to flow into the basin.”
This change will redraw the map of East Africa, giving some countries coastlines they didn’t have before and others splitting them in two and cutting them off from the mainland.
Of course, any change here will take at least a million years, so no one knows if these countries will continue to exist or remain the same shape they are now.