Giant crack in Africa will create a new ocean:...

Recently I came across a trend called "giant crack in Africa will create a new ocean". Immediately I thought, "this can't possibly true". But then I found a story on MSNBC about it. Giant crack in Africa will create a new ocean: True. And it's quite the fascinating story at that.

In Ethiopia, there is a 35-mile rift in the desert that geologists believe is destined to become a new ocean. The activity that caused this rift is also parting the Red Sea. It all happened in 2005 while Dabbahu, a volcano, erupted and parted the rift with its flowing magma. Professor Cindy Ebinger from the University of Rochester says that seafloor ridges are created by this same type of volcanic activity, but the results are not of the same extent. "We know that seafloor ridges are created by a similar intrusion of magma into a rift, but we never knew that a huge length of the ridge could break open at once like this," she says.

Part of me is relieved because I know that this rift wasn't caused by anything man-made. However, because the change happened so quickly and not in slow "natural" way (i.e. taking thousands of years), I fear for the people who live near the 35-mile rift. Could people lose their homes, or worse, die as a result of the rift growing more out of control? Would you worry if you lived within a 50-mile radius of a major rift such as this?