Some geology out of tripe

An early start this (Saturday) morning, and on firing up my laptop, the snap above supplied by Microsoft News caught my eye. Coupled with the alarming headline 'this huge crack in Kenya is splitting Africa in two'. The story came from 'Starinsider' at reference 1, seemingly an online, 21st century version of magazines like 'Titbits' which used to be provided for people waiting their turn at gentlemen's hairdressers.

From where I branched to the story at reference 2, the product of various geology flavoured departments in universities in China. A spin-off from the considerable and growing Chinese presence in Africa?

One of today's big worries is climate change, which generally works in terms of thousands of years, although we humans have managed to rather speed things up. 

So I am now reminded of geological change, which generally works in terms of millions of years. Volcanoes are one sort of change, both visible and violent. The rift valley of Africa, splitting it more or less from top to bottom is another, visible but largely non-violent. With the fissure snapped above being one of a number of such in the floor of the Kenyan section of this rift valley, surface manifestations of much deeper movements of the rock below. Worrying, not so say alarming, if you live near one.

With reference 2 explaining that such fissures are to be found in a number of locations scattered around the world. However, unlike climate change, there is unlikely to be any geological action of this sort anywhere near Epsom, any time soon.

Some accessible background is provided by references 3 and 4.

PS 1: then, over breakfast, my attention was caught by a short item in the Metro about a man caught building a (rather amateurish looking) sub-machine gun in his garage being jailed for seven years. Which seemed to me to be quite a long time to be jailed for getting ready for a crime rather than actually committing one - always a rather grey & tricky area. Poking around, far and away the most useful report of the case that I turned up was the West Midlands police site at reference 5. A man with thoroughly a unpleasant view of the world, obsessed with guns, collecting various materials about same from various obscure parts of the Internet and using special software to cover his tracks. Picked up in 2021, around two years ago. With the borders between being a nasty prat, crime and mental health being another grey & tricky area. I don't suppose keeping him in jail for a few more years is going to do him much good - but what else can one do?

PS 2: a significant plus for the police site was that it was not festooned with distracting advertisements, in the way of most of the others.

References

Reference 1: https://www.starsinsider.com/.

Reference 2: The deep origin of ground fissures in the Kenya Rift Valley - Zhijie Jia, Hongjie Wu, Jianbing Peng, Quanzhong Lu,Weiliang Huang, Chuntao Liu, Feiyong Wang, Yang Liu, Ming He - 2023. To be found at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9985622/.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary. Now to 2.5 million years ago (mya).

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cenozoic. Now to 65 mya.

Reference 5: https://www.west-midlands.police.uk/news/man-jailed-after-west-midlands-ctu-investigation.