2023-10-31 09:30:04
In 2016, without warning, a crack 15 meters deep and up to 20 meters wide emerged in Narok County, Kenya. Its rapid appearance devastated roads, power lines and homes, but what was most shocking was the fear it instilled in the population, not only in Kenya, but throughout the region of the Great Rift Valley of East Africa, which extends along of 3,000 kilometers and divides the African tectonic plate in two.
This mystery, although apparently a manifestation of erosion, left experts with questions about its formation and its relationship to the East African Rift. Although the causes are still unclear, what we do know is that Africa is dividing in two, a process that has been happening for 30,000 years.
Despite our perception that tectonic plates are static structures, these plates can break due to various geological pressures. 138 million years ago, the African and South American plates separated, creating two continental masses that fit together almost perfectly. The same thing is happening now with the African plate.
The Great Rift Valley runs across the continent from the Gulf of Aden to Zimbabwe and will become the dividing line between the Somali and Nubian plates, ultimately forming a new sea.
A new sea? Yeah, Two years agowe discovered that the Victoria microplate (the piece of land that lies between the two large branches of the ‘Greek y’ of the Rift and that we could see on the map around Lake Victoria) had been rotating counterclockwise for years with respect to the African plate.
This process, which will take about 50,000 years to complete, demonstrates the real functioning of the world around us, despite surprising events such as the appearance of the crack in Kenya that seem to indicate that “something is happening.” It is a fascinating insight into the geological dynamics of the Earth.
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