



Tectonic rifts of this magnitude usually develop at a rate too slow for the human eye to notice. However back in september 2005, a 60km long collection of cracks opened up in ethiopia's afar region, all over the space of 3 weeks. Over the next year the fissures widened until in september 2006 a volcanic vent opened up and blew open a ½ km long crack. The area in question - the afar triangle - is a meeting point of 3 tectonic plates and geologists predict that soon (by soon they mean approximately 10 million years) it will sink and become a new ocean basin, splitting the continent apart.


