Earth’s sixth ocean is beginning to form, though it may be millions of years before we properly see it
Planet Earth’s sixth ocean has been spotted slowly emerging in what is a geological phenomenon.
While experts have been researching our planet for many a generation now, they continue to learn new things every single day.
In recent years, researchers discovered two parts of land, which make up our planet’s second-largest and second-most populous continent, beginning to separate.
This has in turn made way for a whole new ocean to run through the middle of it.
And if things continue the way they are, we could soon see a situation where countries such as Zambia and Uganda have their own coastline, despite currently being landlocked.
While many of Earth’s changes may not seem noticeable to the naked eye, tectonic plates are constantly on the move.
Landlocked Zambia could one day have its coastline (Getty Stock Photo)
The Earth’s lithosphere, which is formed by the crust and the upper part of the mantle, is separated into a number of these tectonic plates.
And it’s the movement of tectonic plates in a certain part of the world that is changing our planet as we know it.
The peer-reviewed journal Geophysical Research Letters confirmed that a new ocean is being created as the African continent is beginning to split in half.
The crack is found on the borders of the boundaries of the African, Arabian and Somali tectonic plates.
For the past 30 million years, the Arabian plate has been slowly moving away from the African continent.
The Somali plate is also moving away from the African plate – peeling its way through the East African Plate in the process.
Thanks to the advancement in technology, particularly through the use of GPS instruments, experts are able to make precise conclusions of such land movements.
A crack is appearing through Africa (University of Rochester)
A marine geophysicist and a professor based at the University of California, Ken Macdonald, said: “With GPS measurements, you can measure rates of movement down to a few millimetres per year.
“As we get more and more measurements from GPS, we can get a much greater sense of what’s going on.”
Speaking of the discovery as a whole, Macdonald added: “The Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea will flood in over the Afar region and into the East African Rift Valley and become a new ocean, and that part of East Africa will become its own separate small continent.”
While it is still millions of years away at this point, such geographic event will lead to a new ocean across the entirety of the rift.
This is already happening, according to experts.
