Word: rifts
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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During some 50 dives this summer as part of Project FAMOUS, the American submersible Alvin and its French counterparts Archimède and Cyana explored one of the earth's last great frontiers: the rugged, seismically active rift valley that cleaves the floor of the Atlantic almost all the way from the Arctic Ocean to Antarctica. Last week, as the scientists who took part in FAMOUS (for French-American Mid-Ocean Undersea Study) returned home from their expedition to the bottom of the sea, they reported that their little craft had discovered important new clues to the secrets...
...mechanism that continues to propel these great land masses away from the rift valley remains one of geology's great mysteries. According to Geologist Wilfred Bryan of the Woods Hole (Mass.) Oceanographic Institution, the submarine explorers found indications that contrary to some theories, the continents are not forced apart by powerful lava flows at the site of the rift valley. If massive eruptions of lava were forcing the continents apart, Bryan says, the crews of the subs would have seen giant volcanoes like those in Hawaii. But they spotted only small mountains-a sign of minor uplifting by forces...
...lava flows that the deep divers found in the rift valley were hardened into all sorts of bizarre configurations...
...tremendous pressure. On the contrary, it seemed to have simply peaked from the interior of the earth through cracks created as the earth's surface was stretched. Explained Bryan: "Like a cobblestone street, the earth's crust can be pulled apart very easily. And it is the rift valley where this fracturing is occurring...
...nation's two major Presbyterian bodies were separated last week by only six blocks-and more than a century of history. As in other denominations, Northern and Southern Presbyterians split on the slavery issue in 1861. Efforts to heal the rift brought the churches' two general assemblies to tandem meetings in Louisville last week, with a joint session for the formal unveiling of a plan for reunion. But the encounter was still as tentative as the mating dance of sand crabs...