Study Finds Giant 'Superplume' Slowly Splitting Africa In Two

In 10 million years, we might have two Half-ricas, according to a new study by the Scripps Institute of Oceanography and the University of California at San Diego. But this isn't the doing of some Nikola Tesla-esque mad scientist and a world splitting super weapon; in fact it's due to a superplume, a massive upwelling of molten rock slowly splitting the African tectonic plate in two.

Plumes of magma have long been thought to move the continents around, at least since 1912 when Alfred Wegener said that Africa and South America looked like they kind of fit together. But in East Africa, scientists have only recently begun to precisely figure out why two massive chunks of land are separating by a few millimeters every year.

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