Geologists have discovered that the African continent will split apart sooner than we thought. An active rift has reached a "critical threshold" and will soon break apart, forming a new ocean. That said, 'soon' is a relative term – it'll still take a few million years more, but that's a blink of an eye on a geological scale . "We found that rifting in this zone is more advanced, and the crust is thinner, than anyone had recognized," says Christian Rowan, a geoscientist at Columbia University. "