The Earth Is Splitting Open: Scientists Confirm Deep Mantle Force Tearing Africa Apart By David Freeman - June 26, 2025
In January 2025, Above The Norm News reported that Africa was breaking apart. Visible surface fractures had torn through roads in Kenya and Ethiopia. Earthquakes were accelerating across the Horn of Africa. Satellite data confirmed that the Somali Plate was drifting eastward, separating from the rest of the African continent. It was clear that something deep was shifting. Now, newly published geophysical evidence confirms what many researchers suspected: a massive, chemically complex mantle upwelling is actively tearing the land apart from below.
The peer-reviewed study, published in Nature Geoscience on 25 June 2025, outlines the results of a major investigation across the Afar Triangle, where the Red Sea Rift, Gulf of Aden Rift, and the Main Ethiopian Rift converge. Scientists examined over 130 volcanic sites in Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Eritrea, analysing rock chemistry, seismic velocity data, and crustal structure. The findings reveal a single, asymmetric mantle upwelling stretching upward from more than 1,000 kilometres beneath the surface. Unlike a stable plume, this one pulses, shifts, and spreads differently across each rift zone. It is not a uniform vertical column. It moves where the crust allows it to.
In the Red Sea Rift, where the crust is thinner and rifting rates are higher, the upwelling flows more freely. Melt rises with fewer obstacles and accumulates near the surface. In the Main Ethiopian Rift, however, the crust is thicker and less accommodating. There, the upwelling compresses and slows, building pressure at depth. The result is not only crustal thinning but distortion, unstable melt distribution, and increased seismic strain. The differences between these rift zones are now understood to be a function of how the mantle upwelling interacts with the overriding plate.
The study confirms that seismic velocities have dropped sharply across multiple depth levels, consistent with elevated melt content in the mantle. Radiogenic isotope analysis from rock samples shows that this isn’t a temporary shift. The geochemistry indicates repeated magma pulses rising in waves. These aren’t isolated intrusions-they are part of an active, evolving system that spans the entire Afar region.
Importantly, the new data also suggests that each rift arm is responding independently to the same mantle source. The upwelling is shared, but the tectonic response is not. The Red Sea Rift is pulling apart quickly, stretching and thinning in a way that resembles early oceanic spreading. The Gulf of Aden Rift, though geologically younger, is also exhibiting signs of advancing extension. The Main Ethiopian Rift, in contrast, is constraining the flow, acting as a bottleneck. The magma stalls, pressure builds, and the crust fractures in unpredictable ways.
The team used advanced statistical models to test whether the signal could be explained by multiple smaller plumes. Instead, the results consistently supported a single source-one heterogeneous mantle upwelling spreading laterally and vertically in pulses, shaped by the variable conditions of the lithosphere above. They also conducted principal component analysis and clustering on isotopic data, revealing that some of the same melt signatures appear in different rift arms, further supporting the idea of a common origin.
Visual evidence aligns with the geophysical data. Across the Afar Triangle, fissures have widened in recent years. Entire fields have sunk. In parts of Ethiopia, farmland has split open, and villages sit near slowly expanding ground ruptures. During the Dabbahu eruption in 2005, more than 130 earthquakes struck in a single week. Since then, surface activity has increased, and the deformation has not reversed. GPS measurements confirm continued lateral drift between plates.
These changes are not isolated. They represent an intensifying phase in a much longer process. But what makes this region unique is the combination of surface collapse with direct evidence of subsurface forcing. Most continental rifts do not show such a clear link between mantle structure and surface deformation. In Afar, that link is now confirmed.
As the crust continues to weaken, the next phase of geological transformation may begin. Once faulting reaches critical levels and elevation drops far enough, seawater from the Indian Ocean will begin to flood the rift. That process may already be underway in the southern Red Sea. Over time, a new ocean basin will emerge. Portions of Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia will be permanently isolated. A new coastline will form. The Arabian Peninsula will continue to drift.
What this study confirms is that the East African Rift is not simply reacting to surface strain-it is being driven apart by a large-scale, compositionally variable mantle upwelling. The pulse is active. The melt is rising. The crust is thinning. What began as a continental fracture is moving toward full-scale separation.
This is no longer just surface instability. It is the groundwork for ocean formation.
Source:
Citation: Watts, E. J., Rees, R., Jonathan, P., Keir, D., Taylor, R. N., et al. (2025). Mantle upwelling at Afar triple junction shaped by overriding plate dynamics. Nature Geoscience. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-025-01717-0
I've read about volcanic activity in recent years in Africa, a very active region. This makes it sound even more serious - although it's interesting how coastlines may be affected.-greenman
Re: Very interesting
Posted by Christopher Blackwell on June 26, 2025, 10:21 am, in reply to "Very interesting"
Greenman, a very long term project.ChristopherBlackwell
WOW!! Is that how the continents originally split apart eons ago?
Contginental drift is so slow, in human terms its unnoticeable.
The Afrrican rift valley estends north, forming the Red Sea, clear up into Israel. The Dead Sea is a land depression of the tectonic event. Every year hundreds to thousands of small earthquakes are recorded there. Most too small to notice.
A building built on a fault fracture will be slowly torn apart. Nothing can stop it.
Colorado has such a rift valley in formation the San Luis. Every year the Sangre de Cristo and San Juan ranges distance from each other by a few millimeters. It has formed a mountain valley almost as large as the state of Massachusetts.
The Sangre de Cristo range is the eastern rim of the rift, and in a nook between the main range and the Blanca massif is Great Sand Dunes National Park, with the world's tallest (officially measured) sand dunes, up to 1200 feet tall. In the photo above you see the whole thing as one enormous barchan dune being swept up by wind against the base of the Sangre de Cristo range. Everything to the left of the mountain range is the San Luis Valley, a dry, flat, arid sandy desert.
There are hot springs all over these mountains, and warm artesian springs in the valley. A tilapia farm there brought in some alligators to dispose of tilapia remains, and the gators naturalized. About 4000 live year round in the warm artesian water, where air temperature in winter can drop to -50F.
In the southern end of the valley, the Rio Grande tumbles into the actual rift itself; the Rio Grande Gorge.
You can look away from a painting, but you can't listen away from a symphony
on June 25, 2025, 8:37 pm
