00:00Africa's Afar Triangle, where three tectonic plates tear a continent apart.
00:06Erta Ale volcano glows red above Ethiopia's Afar Triangle.
00:11Deep beneath East Africa, hot mantle pulses push three tectonic plates apart.
00:17Scientists sampled volcanic rocks across Afar,
00:20where chemical signatures showed rhythmic surges rising from Earth's mantle.
00:24The Arabian Plate, Nubian Plate, and Somali Plate pull away from one another beneath cracked desert ground.
00:32Afar's rift valleys split dusty plains with open fractures, lava fields, hot springs, and smoking volcanic cones.
00:40Molten mantle rises and pulses under Ethiopia, then channels through thin zones where the stretching crust opens.
00:48Erta Ale's lava lake burns inside a dark crater, showing heat from the same restless region below.
00:54The Red Sea rift spreads faster than the main Ethiopian rift, so mantle pulses travel differently along each crack.
01:02Researchers from Southampton and Swansea link the pulsing plume to plate motion above the Afar Triple Junction.
01:08A GPS station measures slow ground movement, while satellites map cracks widening across the East African rift.
01:16Over millions of years, seawater could flood the sinking rift and carve a new ocean basin.
01:22Desert roads, volcano cones, salt flats, and cracked basalt show a continent pulling apart in slow motion.
01:30A red lava glow under black sky marks the place where Africa is slowly tearing open.
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