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01/20/2011

 

High-Speed Geology

Violent�Seismic Activity�Tearing Africa in Two

By Axel Bojanowski

Photo Gallery: 22 Photos

University of Bristol / Lorraine Field

The fissures began appearing years ago. But in recent months, seismic activity has accelerated in northeastern Africa as the continent breaks apart in slow motion. Researchers say that lava in the region is consistent with magma normally seen on the sea floor -- and that water will ultimately cover the desert.

Cynthia Ebinger, a geologist from the University of Rochester in New York, could hardly believe what the caller from the deserts of Ethiopia was saying. It was an employee at a mineralogy company -- and he reported that the famous Erta Ale volcano in northeastern Ethiopia was erupting. Ebinger, who has studied the volcano for years, was taken aback. The volcano's crater had always been filled with a bubbling soup of silver-black lava, but it had been decades since its last eruption.

'); document.writeln(''); document.writeln(''); document.writeln(''); } // --> The call came last November. And Ebinger immediately flew to Ethiopia with some fellow researchers. "The volcano was bubbling over; flaming-red lava was shooting up into the sky," Ebinger told SPIEGEL ONLINE.

The earth is in upheaval in northeastern Africa, and the region is changing quickly. The desert floor is quaking and splitting open, volcanoes are boiling over, and seawaters are encroaching upon the land. Africa, researchers are certain, is splitting apart at a rate rarely seen in geology.

The first fracture appeared millions of years ago, resulting in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. The second fracture, stretching south from Ethiopia to Mozambique, is known as the Great Rift Valley, and it is lined with several volcanoes. Millions of years from now, it too will be filled with seawater.

Could Go Quickly

But in the Danakil Depression, in the northern part of the valley, the ocean could arrive much sooner. There, low, 25 meter (82 foot) hills are the only thing holding back the waters of the Red Sea. The land behind them has already dropped dozens of meters from previous levels and white salt deposits on the desert floor testify to past encroachments of the sea. But lava soon choked off its access.

For now, no one can really say when the sea will finally flood the desert. But when it does, it could go quickly. "The hills could sink in a matter of days," Tim Wright, a fellow at the University of Leeds' School of Earth and Environment, said at a recent conference hosted by the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco.

In the last five years, the geologic transformation of northeastern Africa has "accelerated dramatically," says Wright. Indeed, the process is going much faster than many had anticipated. In recent years, geologists had measured just a few millimeters of movement each year. "But now the earth is opening up by the meter," says Loraine Field, a scholar at the University of Bristol who also attended the conference.

Earth tremors cause deep fissures to form in the desert floor and the ground in East Africa is shattering like broken glass. Researchers in the Gulf of Tadjoura, which juts into Djibouti from the Gulf of Aden, have recently registered a barrage of seismic shocks. "The quakes are happening on the mid-ocean ridge," Ebinger reports.

Shifting Tectonic Plates

Lava gushes out of fissures in these underwater mountain ranges to constantly create new earth crust -- when it hardens, it becomes part of the sea floor. As the magma surges upward, it spreads the ocean floor on both sides, shifting tectonic plates and causing tremors.

In recent months, the quaking in the Gulf of Tadjoura has been getting closer and closer to the coastline. As Ebinger explains, the splitting of the ocean floor will gradually extend to dry land. This is already the case along some fault lines in the Ethiopian desert, creating a geological spectacle that can otherwise only be witnessed deep below the surface of the ocean.

Even the pattern of earthquakes supports the conclusion that the desert landscape is transforming into a deep seafloor, according to a recent article in the Journal of Geophysical Research published by Zhaohui Yang and Wang-Ping Chen, two geologists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The researchers have recorded several strong earthquakes at a shallow depth in northeastern Africa similar to ones that are otherwise only seen on mid-ocean ridges far out at sea.

In recent months, researchers have also recorded an up-tick in volcanic activity. Indeed, geologists have discovered volcanic eruptions near the earth's surface at 22 places in the Afar Triangle in northeastern Africa. Magma has caused fissures up to eight meters (26 feet) wide to open up in the ground, reports Derek Keir from the University of Leeds. While most of the magma remains beneath the surface, in places like Erta Ale it has made its way above ground.

An Ocean Without Water

Scientists have also noted that the kind of magma bubbling up in the region is the type otherwise only seen spewing forth from mid-ocean ridges deep below the water's surface. One of its signature characteristics is a low proportion of silicic acid. The magma coming out of Erta Ale has the same chemical composition as the kind that emerges from deep-sea volcanoes. The entire region increasingly resembles an ocean floor -- one without water.

The new burst in activity began in 2005, when a 60-kilometer-long fissure suddenly formed in the Afar Depression. Since then, roughly 3.5 cubic kilometers of magma have gushed forth, according to Tim Wright -- enough to cover the entire area of London to an average person's height.

From a geological perspective, the speed with which the magma is pushing forth is astonishing. It has been channeling its way through the rock below the earth's surface at speeds of up to 30 meters per minute, reports Eric Jacques from the Institute of Earth Physics of Paris. Satellite measurements attest to the consequences: In one 200-kilometer stretch welling up with magma, the ground looks like asphalt on a hot summer day. Magma is also pooling up under the Dabbahu Volcano in northern Ethiopia, Lorraine Field reported in San Francisco.

Continuing to Expand

'); document.writeln(''); document.writeln(''); document.writeln(''); } // --> The satellite data has also shown that a much larger area has been scarred by fissures than previously assumed, says Keir. Subterranean currents of magma are also causing ground temperatures to spike in eastern Egypt, a team of geologists from Egypt's National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics recently reported in Seismological Research Letters. At the AGU conference, Columbia University's James Gaherty reported that magma eruptions have ripped a 17-kilometer gash into the desert floor in the northern part of Malawi and that the lateral pressure they have exerted has even lifted the surrounding earth up to 50 centimeters (20 inches) in places.

The most violent upsurge of magma in recent years, though, happened in an unexpected place. In May 2009, a subterranean volcano erupted in Saudi Arabia. A strong earthquake with a magnitude of 5.7 accompanied by tens of thousands of milder tremors forced 30,000 to seek shelter. Magma spewed out of the ground in an area about the size of Berlin and Hamburg combined, Sigurjon Jonsson from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology reported at the AGU meeting. The fact that the eruption took place almost 200 kilometers (124 miles) away from the fault line in North Africa "surprised all of us," says Cynthia Ebinger. And the world's largest geological construction site continues to expand. Loraine Field confirms that more and more magna is pushing its way to the earth's surface, adding that: "The magma chamber is reloading."

Oxford University's David Ferguson predicts a considerable increase in volcanic eruptions and earthquakes in the region over the next decade. They will, he says, "become of increasingly large magnitude."

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Verizon made it official today: it will be getting the iPhone, ending years of AT&T exclusivity in the U.S. With the Verizon iPhone a reality, there is one question that millions of iPhone owners are now asking themselves: should I switch carriers?

After years of frustration with dropped calls and spotty 3G connectivity, we understand why so many iPhone users are eager to become Verizon customers. In our reader poll, 29% of MashableMashable

readers say they’re switching to Verizon ASAP, while another 16% say they’re switching after their current contract expires.

A lot of people have been asking us about whether switching is a good idea. More specifically, they want to understand the differences between the AT&T iPhone, a UMTS/GSM device, and the Verizon iPhone, a CDMA gadget. What exactly is CDMA? Is it better or worse than UMTS? Why is it impossible to to talk and browse the web at the same time on a Verizon iPhone?

To answer your questions, we wrote a short guide on the subject of CDMA, UMTS and the differences between AT&T and Verizon’s 3G networks:

The Basics on CDMA, GSM and UMTS

The primary difference between the AT&T iPhone and the Verizon iPhone is the technology each uses for 3G connectivity.

AT&T employs the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System in its network. UMTS is built upon concepts from the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) standard, the basis for EDGE (Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution). Because of this shared architecture, most UMTS devices support GSM and EDGE, including the AT&T iPhone.

GSM and UMTS technology is widely used worldwide. UMTS phones can be easily moved from one UMTS network to another, making them ideal for international use.

Verizon, on the other hand, uses code division multiples access (CDMA), a form of spread-spectrum signaling that utilizes bandwidth more effectively than most other solutions; it’s often considered more spectrally efficient. CDMA also utilizes soft handovers of phone call, so instead of switching directly from one tower to the next (hard handover), CDMA devices can receive a signal from multiple towers simultaneously. That makes the shift between towers less detectable, and it decreases the rate of dropped calls. On the other hand, UMTS devices aren’t as efficient at soft handovers.

CDMA technology does have several disadvantages, though. It can’t use a SIM card, making it far more difficult to switch handsets. More important is that UMTS networks tend to upload and download data faster than CDMA. A test last year by PCWorld demonstrated that AT&T has the fastest 3G network by a healthy margin. There is, of course, great variation network speeds depending on location, population density and other factors, but in general you’re going to get a faster 3G connection on AT&T (UMTS) than you will on Verizon (CDMA).

One of the other big disadvantages of CDMA is its inability to carry voice and data simultaneously. AT&T phones can browse the web while on a phone call. Verizon phones don’t have that capability, although the network is working on that feature.

What’s the Bottom Line?

In the end, your phone is going to work essentially the same on both networks, and the truth is that the vast majority of users won’t notice any difference. Here are some key points to remember, though:

• Calls: In general, Verizon will drop less calls. It’s unclear what impact the iPhone will have on its network, but we don’t expect it to be as bad as AT&T was in its early years. Verizon’s network has proven itself to be more robust.
• Speed: In general, AT&T has the faster 3G network, and in some cases it’s a great deal faster than Verizon.
• Simultaneous voice and data: Only AT&T is capable of talking on the phone and surfing the web at the same time, but Verizon is working on a solution, saying the fix might be implemented by the end of this year.

The latter point may become a nonissue soon, though. According to The Wall Street Journal, a solution to carry voice and data simultaneously on CDMA networks is coming later this year:

“The inability to multitask can be traced to a decision years ago by the engineers developing CDMA to split voice and data traffic into separate signals, so they can’t run both at once.

Now, they’re working to overcome it. A solution that will allow CDMA networks to carry voice and data simultaneously will become commercially available in the first half of [2011], said Brad Shewmake, spokesman for the CDMA Development Group, an industry organization.”

This argument between CDMA and UMTS may become a moot point in the next few years, though, as 4G networks overtake 3G technology. WiMaxWimax

and LTE are the primary 4G standards. Both AT&T and Verizon are utilizing LTE as a standard for their 4G networks.

LTE is a GSM-based technology, so it’s no surprise AT&T would embrace it. Verizon’s decision to utilize LTE though could make the argument between the two networks moot, though. They are using the same technology, meaning that the effectiveness of their 4G implementations will determine how fast and reliable they are. Because it’s GSM-based, it will also support simultaneous voice and data.

For now, it’s smart to at least know the advantages and disadvantages of CDMA and UMTS. It will change in the next few years, though.

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