Unbelievable! A sixth ocean is forming right now in Africa, here's how

© Tiago Ventura/Pexels

This phenomenon is taking place in East Africa, more precisely in the Afar region of Ethiopia. In this territory where the heat reaches dizzying heights and where rain is an exception, the Earth is transforming at high speed. The Earth's crust is fracturing, and is gradually giving birth to a new ocean. This process, which usually takes place over millions of years, is visible here on a human time scale. This may be the only time in our lives that we see tectonic forces acting so rapidly.

The Afar triangle in satellite view. © Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC

The Afar Triangle: An Exceptional Geological Zone

30 million years ago, the first cracks appeared in the East African earth's crust. At this point, the Afar constitutes a tripoint, a rare geological configuration where three immense tectonic plates meet: the Somali plate, separated from the African plate about 25 million years ago, during the formation of the Great African Rift. The Nubian plate, covering most of the African continent, with the exception of the Horn of Africa. And finally, the Somali plate which extends over the following countries: Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia and part of Kenya.

This unique arrangement creates a zone of weakness in the Earth's crust; the plates are moving away from each other; starting the formation of a new ocean. The video below explains the separation process perfectly.

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The oceanization process follows several distinct stages. First, the continental crust, 30 to 40 km thick, stretches and thins under the effect of tectonic forces. Deep faults form, allowing magma to rise from the depths of the mantle. This magma, as it cools, forms a new crust, denser and thinner, with properties similar to those of the ocean floor.

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A new ocean in formation

The Arabian plate, in its movement towards the northeast, is moving away from the African continent at a rate of 2.5 cm per year – the equivalent of the growth of a human fingernail. At the same time, the Nubian and Somali plates are slowly separating, each moving away by 5 mm annually. This difference in speed is generating colossal tensions in the Earth's crust.

This age-old process was disrupted in 2005: in the space of a few days, a seismic sequence of 420 earthquakes tore the Earth's crust apart, generating a gigantic fault 60 km long.

This rupture, which today plunges to a depth of 10 meters, continues to progress. Geologists are observing a stunning geological phenomenon there: the gradual transformation of continental crust into oceanic crust, a process usually hidden under kilometers of water and sediment.

In December 2023, a publication in the journal Technophyscics demonstrated that the phenomenon was accelerating. The oceanic accretion zone that is forming has all the signs of a nascent ridge: magmatic upwelling, crustal thinning and the emplacement of basaltic rocks typical of the ocean floor.

According to Cynthia Ebinger, co-author of the study, in less than a million years – the blink of an eye on a geological scale – the waters of the Red Sea will rush into this continental breach, creating a new maritime connection with the Gulf d’Aden.

The researcher prefers to specify the nature of this new expanse of water: ” In fact, it will not exactly be a new ocean, even if we commonly call it that. Visualize it as an expansion of the Red Sea ». Indeed, a real ocean has its own watersheds, that is, the territories drained by the rivers that flow into this ocean. Here, it will rather be an extension of the watersheds of the Red Sea.

But this distinction is purely semantic: it will indeed be the birth of a new expanse of salt water. Which could be further accelerated in the event of volcanic activity or earthquakes, as was the case in 2005. The region is also very conducive to this type of phenomenon: eruptions and earthquakes are extremely frequent, which could further facilitate the entry of water from the Red Sea into the area being formed.

• A huge fault in East Africa is rapidly expanding, heralding the future formation of a body of water that will separate part of the continent.
• This tectonic phenomenon, normally very slow, was accelerated by earthquakes in 2005, gradually transforming the Earth's crust.
• In less than a million years, the Red Sea will infiltrate this fracture, creating a new inland sea that will redraw the geography of the region.

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