They’ve increased the chances of it happening 😳

Additionally, the Somali plate is also moving away from the African plate – peeling its way through the East African Rift Valley.

Africa is beginning to split.
Getty Stock Photo
Through the use of GPS instruments, researchers have been able to make precise measurements of these land movements.

Ken Macdonald, a marine geophysicist and professor emeritus based at the University of California, explained: “With GPS measurements, you can measure rates of movement down to a few millimetres per year.

He added: “As we get more and more measurements from GPS, we can get a much greater sense of what’s going on.”

“The Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea will flood in over the Afar region and into the East African Rift Valley and become a new ocean, and that part of East Africa will become its own separate small continent,” Macdonald confirmed.

The three tectonic plates are moving away from each other at a range of differing speeds, but the geophysicist has explained that the Arabian plate is moving away from Africa at a rate of approximately one inch per year.

Both the African and Somali plate are reported to be breaking away at an even slower rate, at round half an inch to 0.2 inches every year.