the.com/rift
a crack so committed it builds oceans and breaks continents up forever.
means A rift is a split, crack, or break — whether in rock, in the ground, or between people once close.
from From Old Norse 'ript' meaning a breach or breaking of an agreement, related to 'rifa,' to tear or rive apart. English took it up in the Middle Ages first for literal cracks and fissures; the figurative 'rift between friends' came later, the metaphor leaning hard on that original sense of something torn that won't easily knit back together. A close cousin of the verb 'rive,' as in 'riven.'
- valley maker
- East Africa is splitting into two continents now
- speed
- Rifts widen slower than fingernails grow
- ocean birth
- The Atlantic began as a rift in Pangaea
- deepest
- Lake Baikal fills a rift over a mile deep
- other worlds
- Mars hosts Valles Marineris, a rift dwarfing Earth's
east african rift valley — 4,600 km geological formation stretching from lebanon to mozambique, where tectonic plates are actively separating
mid-ocean ridge — 65,000 km underwater mountain chain where new oceanic crust forms as plates diverge