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A giant crack in Earth's crust we thought had stopped moving never actually did. And if it ever finishes opening, the map of the world would look completely different. A new study found that the Gulf of Suez in Egypt is still slowly pulling apart. The movement is kind of tiny, only about 01 to 002 in a year. That's about as fast as your fingernails grow. In other words, you can't actually see this process with your own eyes, but the ground there is changing and we can't stop this from happening. And that can be a big problem.
You see, the Gulf of Suez sits between mainland Africa and the Sinai Peninsula. It's part of a huge system where giant pieces of Earth's crust are pulling away from each other. You can think of our planet's crust like an enormous jigsaw puzzle made of huge pieces called tectonic plates. These plates aren't fixed in place. They slowly move around all the time. Millions of years ago, the Arabian plate started drifting away from the African plate. And once they pulled apart, the ground cracked open. That's how the Red Sea and the Gulf of Suez began to form. For a long time, scientists thought the Gulf of Suez had finished opening about 5 million years ago. They were sure that it was just an
old crack left behind while the nearby Red Sea kept growing. And now we found out that it might not be the whole story. Researchers looked at almost 190 m of the Gulf. They studied the shape of the land, old river valleys, and even ancient coral reefs. and they discovered that the ground was still slowly stretching apart. This movement is super slow, so we can't see it, but modern measuring tools can detect it. You might be wondering, why should we care? Let's say the Gulf of Suez keeps opening. Could Africa eventually split away from the Middle East? The answer is yes. Well, technically. And if it ever happened, the effects would be enormous. The Red Sea would eventually connect directly to
the Mediterranean. This would create a brand new ocean passage. The cities around the Gulf of Suez and even today's Suez Canal would look completely different. Plus, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean are very different. The Red Sea is warmer and saltier. If the two mixed, many species from the Red Sea could spread into the Mediterranean, pushing out local marine life and altering entire ecosystems. It would also completely reshape one of the world's busiest shipping routes. The Suez Canal wouldn't exist anymore. Instead, there would be a massive natural sea passage going all the way through the region. ports, pipelines,
bridges, and other infrastructure would all have to adapt to this new landscape. But let's take a closer look at how scientists figured out that the process is far from over. They basically followed a trail of clues like real detectives. And probably the biggest piece of evidence came from ancient coral reefs. When those corals were alive millions of years ago, they grew right at sea level, just like coral reefs today. But now some of them sit at about 61 feet above the water. That's almost as tall as a six-story building. But coral just can't climb uphill. So the only logical explanation is that the ground slowly lifted it over millions of years. The scientists looked at old
river valleys. The thing is, rivers normally take the easiest path downhill, but some of those ancient river channels seem to be bent, stretched, and even slightly twisted. It's almost like drawing a straight line on a rubber band and then pulling this band apart. The line doesn't break, but it slowly changes its shape. That's exactly what happened to the landscape. Researchers also checked old cracks in Earth's crust called faults. We thought many of them had stopped moving millions of years ago, but they found signs that some of those faults were still shifting. Then there were also GPS measurements.
The thing is, modern GPS is so accurate that it can measure movements smaller than the width of a grain of rice. And those measurements showed that the African plate and the Arabian plate were still moving away from each other. Now, none of those clues proves the theory directly, but all of them point in the same direction. The Gulf of Suez never completely stopped opening, even though the movement is incredibly slow. Scientists even have a name for this. They call it residual deformation. It means that the biggest part of the movement is over, but the Earth's crust is still stretching a little. And that actually changes the way scientists
think about giant cracks like this. Until now, they mostly put them into two groups. Either they were active and still opening, or they were inactive and finished. Now, it looks like there's a third option since the Gulf of Suez sits somewhere in the middle. It hasn't reached the stage of the Red Sea where the plates have already pulled apart enough for a brand new ocean floor to form. Neither is it opening quickly like the East African rift. Right now, deep beneath East Africa, huge pieces of Earth's crust are slowly pulling away from each other. This giant crack stretches for about 4,000 m, about the distance from New York to London, plus another 500 m.
Scientists think that one day the crack will become so wide that the Indian Ocean will pour in and create another ocean. When that happens, the Horn of Africa, including parts of countries like Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya, could separate from the rest of the continent and become a huge island. The reason this is happening is simple. Three enormous tectonic plates are pulling away from each other in one place called the Afar Triple Junction. It's one of the few places on Earth where scientists can actually see the very beginning of an ocean forming on land. The rift is also home to some of Earth's most extreme places. It includes the Denakil depression, one of the hottest inhabited places on the planet.
The temperatures there often climb above 120° F. It also has Lake Tangika, the world's second deepest freshwater lake. It reaches depths of about 4,800 ft. Even the volcanoes there are unusual. One of them, Old Dono Lengai, erupts black lava instead of the glowing red lava you'd expect. That's because it's made from a different type of molten rock that erupts at much lower temperatures. But let's get back to the Gulf of Suez. Another cool thing about the new discovery is that it might change the way scientists think about how continents break apart. For a long time, geologists thought the process followed a pretty simple pattern. First, the ground starts cracking. Then, a rift
forms. After that, the two sides slowly move apart and eventually a new ocean can appear between them. But the Gulf of Suez doesn't want to follow that script and it means there might be others. Some rifts may stay in this almost finished stage for millions of years. Because of that, scientists may now have to rethink some of their models for how continents split apart over time. As the crust keeps stretching even a bit, old faults can become active again. This may lead to small earthquakes and further landscape changes. That doesn't mean the Gulf of Suez is about to experience some huge disaster. But it does mean that places we think are completely stable may not be as still as they look.
That's why scientists should keep monitoring them. Even tiny movements can help improve earthquake risk models and show what's happening deep underground. In any case, there's no need to worry about an impending disaster happening in the Gulf of Suez right now. Even if it pulls apart completely, it won't be something any of us will see in our lifetimes. At the moment, the ground is pulling apart by only a tiny fraction of an inch each year. At that speed, reaching the breaking point would take millions of years. That's it for today. So, hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends. Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the bright
