The Ground Cracking Open in Africa
Deep beneath Africa something huge is happening – so slowly that no person will ever see the whole change.
A crack overnight
One morning in Kenya, after several days of heavy rain, the ground had suddenly opened up. A giant crack – several metres deep and wide – cut straight through fields, houses and a big road.
One man just managed to save a few things before his house collapsed into the hole. Many people wondered: is Africa breaking apart?
The answer is both yes and no.
Africa is being pulled apart
The surface of the Earth is not one solid shell. It is made of big pieces, a bit like a jigsaw puzzle. The pieces are called plates, and they move all the time – about as slowly as your nails grow.
In East Africa two plates are slowly sliding away from each other. Where they pull apart, a long, deep valley forms. It stretches like a giant zipper from Ethiopia, through Kenya, and far to the south.
Eventually the sea will rush into the crack. Then East Africa will break away from the rest of the continent and become its own big island – and a whole new ocean will be born!
But no panic
This happens incredibly slowly. When scientists say "soon" they mean in a few million years. Nobody is going to wake up one morning with the sea outside their door.
The crack has already been tugging at the Earth for 45 million years. It is not going to hurry up just because we are watching.
Did you know...?
- The plates drift apart as slowly as your nails grow.
- A whole new ocean will be filled with water from the Indian Ocean.
- In the same area thousands of fossils of early humans have been found – it is like a treasure chest from ancient times.
Something to think about
The ground under our feet is not still and finished. It is alive and moving all the time. We only get to see a single frame of a film that has been running for millions of years – and carries on long after us.