- 5 hours ago
Turkey is experiencing a staggering geological transformation as massive earth fissures and fault ruptures become clearly visible from space. This breaking science news examines the East Anatolian Fault and the North Anatolian Fault, where the earth's crust has shifted by several meters, creating jagged scars that stretch across the landscape. Using high-resolution satellite imagery, we can observe the literal tearing apart of the Anatolian Plate as it is squeezed westward, reshaping the country's geography in real-time. This nature documentary investigates how these giant tectonic rifts impact everything from local infrastructure to global seismic risk models. Watch now to see the incredible orbital views of Turkey's changing face and learn why these geological fractures are a wake-up call for the entire planet. Animation is created by Bright Side.
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This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.
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00:00Turkey is quietly tearing itself open, and no one noticed for decades.
00:06Scientists didn't just get a detail wrong,
00:08they misunderstood the entire motion of a massive chunk of Earth's crust.
00:13What they thought was sliding sideways is actually stretching apart,
00:17inch by inch, like the planet is slowly pulled in two.
00:22And once you see that rupture, you start noticing them everywhere.
00:25To understand why this shocked geologists so badly,
00:30picture Earth's crust like a cracked shell floating on something hot and squishy underneath.
00:35Those cracked pieces are tectonic plates.
00:38They move a few inches per year, which sounds tiny,
00:41but over millions of years, it reshapes continents.
00:45Turkey sits in one of the most uncomfortable places on Earth,
00:48squeezed between three huge plates,
00:50Eurasia to the north, Africa to the south,
00:53and Arabia pushing in from the southeast like an elbow in a crowded bus.
00:59For decades, scientists believe Turkey survived this squeeze by sliding sideways.
01:04This type of movement is called a strike-slip fault,
01:07which basically means two chunks of land grind past each other like hands rubbing together.
01:13Turkey has famous ones, like the North Anatolian Fault, which produces horrible earthquakes.
01:19That model felt neat and logical.
01:22Pressure comes in, land escapes sideways, problem solved.
01:27Or so everyone thought.
01:29But geology doesn't always follow neat models made up by humans.
01:33There is a long fracture running beneath salt flats and farmland under central Turkey.
01:39It never behaved like the dangerous sideways faults, so it got less attention.
01:43Then researchers from Curtin University decided to look closer.
01:47And instead of watching earthquakes, they watched lava.
01:51Ancient lava.
01:52Lava that flowed across the fault thousands of years ago,
01:56cooled into solid rock, and later ruptured apart.
02:00There are tiny crystals called zircons inside that lava.
02:03They're basically nature's stopwatches.
02:05Zircons trapped radioactive elements that decay in a predictable rate,
02:10so scientists can tell exactly when the lava cooled.
02:13When they matched lava chunks on opposite sides of the fault and measured how far they drifted apart,
02:19the team managed to reconstruct how the fault was moving over thousands of years.
02:24It turned out that the fault wasn't sliding sideways at all.
02:28It was slowly and steadily pulling apart, just a fraction of an inch per year.
02:32That's thinner than a grain of rice, but over geological time, it's massive.
02:38This type of fault is called an extensional fault,
02:41which means the crust stretches until it thins and breaks.
02:45In simple terms, turkey isn't just being squeezed, it's being torn open.
02:51And as if that wasn't dramatic enough, the story gets worse.
02:55Other studies show that parts of turkey's crust aren't just stretching,
02:58they're dripping downward into the mantle.
03:01When dense chunks of crust get heavy enough,
03:04they peel off and sink like blobs of wax in a lava lamp.
03:08Scientists call it lithospheric dripping,
03:10and this process is basically Earth quietly losing pieces of itself.
03:15When that happens, the surface above weakens.
03:19The land rises, sinks, fractures, and rearranges.
03:23Earthquakes don't always need plates to slam together.
03:26Sometimes the ground fails because its support system melts away from below.
03:31That's why turkey's geology now looks less like a solid slab
03:34and more like stretched taffy over a fire.
03:38Turkey isn't alone with the tectonic drama.
03:41Africa is unzipping itself so slowly that no human will ever wake up
03:46to a brand new ocean outside their window,
03:48yet fast enough that scientists can measure it happening right now.
03:52Deep beneath East Africa, the ground stretches and thins.
03:57Over millions of years, that constant stretch doesn't just rupture rocks,
04:01it rewrites geography,
04:02and it can literally create an ocean where solid land once stood.
04:06All of this focuses on something called the East African Rift System.
04:12This rift runs thousands of miles across places like Ethiopia,
04:17Kenya, Tanzania, and Mozambique,
04:19and it ranks among the largest rift zones on Earth.
04:23A rift zone is where the planet's crust is being pulled apart
04:26instead of being squished together.
04:28Africa doesn't just have a rift zone,
04:30but one of the most extreme versions anywhere,
04:33and it's been stretching for tens of millions of years
04:36like a slow-motion disaster movie.
04:39And the continent isn't one solid piece anymore.
04:43It's splitting into two massive tectonic plates.
04:47The Nubian plate sits to the west,
04:49the Somalian plate to the east,
04:51and they're drifting apart at less than an inch per year,
04:54which sounds like a joke
04:55until you realize your fingernails grow at about the same speed.
04:59But just like in Turkey,
05:01this tiny movement adds up over millions of years.
05:05Back in 2018,
05:06photos of a massive rupture in Kenya caused chaos over the internet,
05:11and headlines panicked everyone with the news
05:13that Africa was splitting in half.
05:16The image looked intense,
05:17but it didn't mean the continent snapped overnight like a broken cookie.
05:21A much deeper process has been going on
05:23for about 25 million years already,
05:26And if we could jump another 5 or 10 million years into the future,
05:30we'd probably watch the crust stretch so thin
05:33that seawater finally rushes in and fills the gap.
05:37While Africa is tearing apart vertically like a slow zipper,
05:41India could be splitting in a totally different way,
05:44horizontally into two giant layers,
05:47each about 60 miles thick,
05:50right as it crashes into Eurasia.
05:52And this collision is what gave us the Himalayas
05:56and the massive Tibetan plateau sitting behind them
05:59like a high-altitude backstage area.
06:02Everyone agrees on the basics.
06:04India has been creeping north for over 60 million years
06:07at about the speed your hair grows,
06:10slamming into Eurasia and forcing rock upward
06:13until it turned into the tallest mountains on Earth.
06:16What no one fully agreed on was how Tibet got so insanely high.
06:22Some scientists thought India was too buoyant to sink
06:25and just slid underneath Eurasia.
06:27Others imagined the plate buckling
06:29like a sheet of paper pushed into a wall.
06:32Then a third idea showed up
06:34and changed the vibe completely.
06:36This new theory says the Indian plate is delaminating,
06:41which means its top layer peels away and props up Tibet.
06:44At the same time, the heavier bottom layer sinks into the mantle,
06:48the hot semi-molten layer beneath Earth's crust.
06:51Scientists can't drill that deep to check,
06:53so they followed a clue instead.
06:56Helium leaking from Tibetan hot springs.
06:59Helium-3 is incredibly rare
07:01and mostly comes from deep inside Earth.
07:04And helium-4 forms closer to the surface.
07:07When researchers measured gases from hundreds of springs,
07:10they found helium-3 leaking out in northern Tibet.
07:14It means that the mantle sits dangerously close to the surface there.
07:18Farther south, that signal disappears.
07:21So it most definitely means that the plate hasn't fully split yet.
07:25But we have earthquake patterns that line up with the same story,
07:29so it looks like India isn't just pushing mountains up.
07:33It's peeling itself apart from the inside while doing it.
07:36All these tectonic processes fit in well with the new massive global stress map.
07:43It shows where the planet is holding it together
07:45and where it's dangerously close to rupturing.
07:49Scientists built it from over 100,000 real stress measurements
07:52taken from boreholes, earthquakes, and field tests,
07:57which is more than double what we had less than a decade ago.
08:00Stress here means the invisible push-and-pull forces inside Earth's crust,
08:05the same forces that quietly load faults for years
08:07before one bad day turns into an earthquake.
08:11This map doesn't just help explain earthquakes,
08:14but also not to mess things up ourselves.
08:17If you drill a tunnel, inject carbon underground,
08:21or build a geothermal plant without knowing which way the rocks want to snap,
08:25you're basically poking a sleeping dragon.
08:27Engineers use this stress data to decide how to angle wells and tunnels
08:33so they don't accidentally cause failures.
08:37Basically, we're finally getting a live dashboard for Earth's breaking points,
08:41and that's a big deal when you live on the surface of a restless planet.
08:46For a long time, we treated continents like rigid boards floating on soup.
08:51Now they look more like stressed muscles,
08:53flexing, tearing, healing, and tearing again.
08:57It shows that the planet under your feet isn't finished.
09:01It's still under construction.
09:04A giant crack, more than 2,000 miles long, is splitting open across Africa.
09:10Roads, houses, even schools are getting torn apart.
09:14Now scientists think they've finally figured out what's causing it.
09:17An enormous column of scorching hot rock called Superplume,
09:22rising from deep inside the Earth,
09:25and it's slowly pushing the land apart inch by inch.
09:31This isn't a small shift, though.
09:33The continent is breaking in two,
09:35and the clue to what's going on could be hidden thousands of miles away in Hawaii.
09:39And why does the United States suddenly have a role in all this?
09:43Hang on, we'll get there.
09:46First, it's important to know this isn't new information.
09:49Africa has been slowly splitting for about 25 million years.
09:54This is happening in a region called the East African Rift System.
09:57It stretches thousands of miles from Ethiopia down to Mozambique
10:02and is the largest active continental rift system on the planet.
10:06And by that, I mean places where the Earth's crust is being stretched and pulled apart,
10:11causing faults, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions.
10:14Scary stuff, to say the least.
10:17Back in 2018, for example,
10:19a massive crack appeared near a small town just west of Kenya's capital, Nairobi.
10:24In some spots, it was about 65 feet wide.
10:27That's almost the length of two school buses parked one after the other.
10:31The whole thing was terrifying.
10:33It happened fast and left a trail of destruction.
10:36Roads were cut off, farms torn apart.
10:39People were on edge as the ground opened up beneath their feet.
10:43And I mean that quite literally.
10:45One man watched the crack rip straight through his home.
10:48He barely had time to grab a few of his belongings before his entire house collapsed.
10:52Sounds terrifying, right?
10:55Since it happened in the East African rift region, panic spread fast.
11:00The media was all over it, claiming it was proof that Africa is splitting apart.
11:05People standing near the crack thought,
11:07oh boy, it's already happening.
11:09And many still believe that today.
11:11But that's not actually the case.
11:13At least, not with that particular crack.
11:16Because after the initial panic, videos and photos of it revealed clues that it wasn't related to tectonic plate movement.
11:25First clue, the two sides of the crack didn't match.
11:28Like trying to fit the wrong puzzle pieces together.
11:30They simply didn't line up.
11:32Second clue, the gap wasn't one continuous line.
11:36There was some kind of soiled bridges in between.
11:39All this showed it was sudden erosion.
11:43I mean, some specialists believe the crack had once been filled with volcanic ash from nearby Mount Longanot.
11:50But then the region was hit with heavy rains.
11:53When water soaked through the soil, it washed the ash away, leaving the gap exposed.
11:58Problem solved.
12:00Even after the truth came out, it was too late.
12:02This event brought the whole Africa is splitting talk back.
12:05And here's the thing.
12:07Even though that crack had nothing to do with it, make no mistake.
12:11Africa is breaking apart.
12:14That's because the continent sits between two tectonic plates.
12:18The Somali plate in the east and the Nubian plate in the west.
12:22The problem is, they're moving away from each other.
12:24And as they drift apart, the gap in the East African rift keeps getting wider.
12:30Eventually, the Somali plate could split completely from the Nubian plate.
12:34Creating an entirely new landmass.
12:37Something on the scale of Madagascar or even New Zealand.
12:41You don't have to worry though.
12:43This process is super, super slow.
12:46So slow that none of us will see it finished.
12:49Experts say the continent is moving apart by about 0.3 inches a year in some places.
12:56To give you an idea, that's less than the length of your fingernail.
12:59So we can say this split will take millions of years.
13:03Which is good news for the people living there.
13:05But that doesn't mean they won't feel the effects of this slow break.
13:10In fact, they're already happening.
13:12Take Ethiopia's Afar region for example.
13:15Back in 2005, this area showed just how unpredictable the rift can be.
13:21In a short period, 420 earthquakes hit the area.
13:25Opening up a massive fissure.
13:28What usually takes centuries, happened in just a few days.
13:32Completely challenging what scientists thought they knew about the speed of geological changes.
13:37Back then, the crack stretched for more than 35 miles.
13:41And life around it is still far from easy.
13:43Recently, recent earthquakes destroyed much of the local infrastructure.
13:4837 schools were damaged, leaving 5,000 students without classrooms.
13:53And that was just one part of the damage.
13:55As the tectonic plates keep moving apart, water will eventually flood into this region.
14:01Creating a brand new ocean, according to some predictions.
14:05Countries like Zambia and Uganda, which are landlocked today, could one day have a coastline.
14:10That could be great news for them, as it might open up new trade routes and completely reshape their economies.
14:17Don't get too excited though.
14:19We won't be diving into the waters of this sixth ocean anytime soon.
14:24The splitting process will take another 5 to 10 million years.
14:28But it's tough to say exactly when, since big seismic events, like earthquakes, could make it all happen faster.
14:36So here's what we know.
14:38The Somali plate and the Nubian plate are in the middle of a dramatic tectonic breakup, slowly moving apart.
14:44Africa is breaking in too.
14:47Earth will probably gain a new ocean because of it.
14:50But until recently, we didn't know exactly what was triggering all of this.
14:54Like, yeah, those tectonic plates are moving.
14:57But why?
14:58I mean, is this massive geological process being driven by something happening in Earth's mantle?
15:04Or could it have a much larger, deeper source?
15:08Well, scientists think they may have finally cracked the mystery.
15:12They believe the continent is breaking apart because there's a deep mantle superplume.
15:17A huge column of hot rock beneath the East African Rift system.
15:22Think of it as a massive, subterranean hammer pushing upward, pressing against the crust, and slowly cracking it apart.
15:30But here's the interesting thing.
15:33Scientists reached that conclusion thanks to something that happened in a completely different part of the world.
15:38Hawaii.
15:40Under this U.S. state, there's also a plume of superhot rock rising from deep inside the planet.
15:47It melts the crust above it, and that's what fuels Hawaii's volcanoes.
15:50As the Pacific plate drifts over this plume, molten rock breaks through in new spots, creating volcano after volcano.
15:59Over millions of years, that's how the Hawaiian islands were formed.
16:03This Hawaiian plume contains noble gases like helium and neon.
16:08And you know where else scientists found those same gases?
16:11That's right, beneath the East African Rift system.
16:14Bingo!
16:15That discovery backed up the theory that a superplume is driving what's happening in Africa.
16:21And we call it super because it might be massive.
16:26You see, these same gases have been found in volcanic rocks from Kenya all the way down to Malawi.
16:32So everything points to the existence of a single superplume that stretches from the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea, not a bunch of several isolated sources.
16:41If their data and research are correct, scientists estimate that this superplume beneath Africa likely starts at the core mantle boundary, which is located about 1,800 miles deep inside the Earth.
16:55While the East African Rift system's chemical signatures are similar to those found in volcanic rocks in Hawaii, they're not identical.
17:04The Hawaiian plume is thought to be a narrow, rising stream of hot mantle, a bit like the movement inside a lava lamp.
17:12Africa's plume might be shaped differently, more like a large mass of hot, buoyant material rising from deep within the Earth.
17:19As it reaches the surface, this hot material hits the colder, solid outer layer and spreads out, pushing hard enough to crack it open and trigger intense volcanic activity across the region.
17:31And if this theory is right, we're watching a slow but unstoppable force that will redraw Africa's map and change the continent forever.
17:41That's it for today. So hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends.
17:47Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!
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