A Two Mile Crack Has Opened Up In Arizona – And Experts Warn That It’s Only Going To Get Bigger

a two-mile crack has opened up in Arizona an experts warn that it's only going to get bigger in the arid wasteland of the Arizona desert something enormous has appeared it stretches out for miles and scientists are pretty sure that it's getting bigger yet this huge split in the earth isn't a naturally occurring phenomena no the blame for it lays squarely on the shoulders of man Arizona is America's sixth largest state it sits in the south of the country and shares a long border with Mexico in terms of climate while the north of the state is home to forests and endorsed heavy snow in the winter the south is a different kettle of fish and it's there that the strange crack has appeared in the south of the state the climate is considered desert that means the area has long hot summers and very mild winters there are though actually three deserts in Arizona the Chihuahuan Desert covers parts of the southeast of the state while the Mojave stretches into the West the largest expanse of desert in Arizona however is the Sonoran and it's in the Sonoran Desert that this enormous crack in the ground has appeared the strange feature stretches for two miles in an area known as Pinal County which is between Tucson and Casa Grande but while the crack has been there for a couple of years geologists are only now discovering the scope of it thanks to the use of new technology Joseph cook is a geologist who works with the Arizona Geological Survey AZ gs and he was the first to spot the fissure he didn't make the find using traditional methods mind you instead Cooke was at his computer when he discovered the opening in the ground and that's not the only technical innovation that the AZ GS is used to investigate the crack you see the first time Cooke saw this new gap in the land he was looking at images from Google Earth that was back in December of 2014 Cooke then set out to map what he saw but when he got there he realized that the imagery Sene was just the tip of the iceberg the crack was much much bigger speaking the LiveScience kook said I realized the Fisher was much longer than what was apparent in the Google imagery almost two miles long in total to begin then the AZ GS used GPS to look deeper into the Fisher but after that they took another pass at it with some even more modern technology the AZ GS actually decided to fly a drone over the length of the Fisher and the footage of the drone captured in fact marks the first occasion that the geologists have used such a gadget to find out more about fishers in Arizona what's more the images that the remote control device recorded have revealed some really interesting things for one although the drone flight hasn't revealed exactly how big the underground portion of the crack is it's shown the full length of the new geological feature it's also provided some of the most dramatic images of the shifting landscape and the geologists now think they understand a good deal more about their newest find in the Arizona desert perhaps the most interesting point about this fissure is that geologists fully expected to keep growing now at its northernmost end the crack is older here it's not as deep either thanks in part to sediment having entered the crack and the walls of the little Canyon collapsing in on themselves this is by no means a uniform depression in the Arizona desert mind you you see at its southern end the crack is 30 feet in depth in some places and reaches around 10 feet in width both ends of the gash are shallower than the biggest sections too though to the south the crack is becoming larger and it's not just getting longer either it's getting wider as time passes as well that said well some parts of the fissure are enormous others are only a few inches wide don't let that fool you however according to cook most of the crack will have started out life as only a small gap in the surface moreover it's what's underneath the crack that you should be more worried about that's because there are likely to be spaces underneath the ground and the ground on top of them is prone to collapse these narrow sections sometimes have open voids underground so collapse of the overlying material is possible this is how the deep open portions of the Fisher form hence those smaller cracks are in a way far more dangerous than the more obvious ten-foot-wide parts of the Fisher so although the crack is in the middle of the desert anyone walking or driving along it without realizing it might find the ground giving way beneath them indeed it's a huge danger to cattle that might be grazing nearby but that raises an important question just what's caused the Fisher to appear and the answer perhaps unfortunately is far more mundane than you might imagine far from being the result of some tear and tectonic plates say or a potential volcanic eruption the crack in Arizona is actually due to actions of farmers the arid nature of the Arizona desert means that farmers need to look under the ground to get water for their crops in livestock and once the waters been taken away there's nothing there to stop the ground above from subsiding that in turn is created not just this crack but plenty of others as well which is to say that this is by no means the only fissure in the landscape of Arizona in fact it represents just over 1% of the cracks that the azg ass is mapped and almost all of them can be traced back to the same source groundwater being used for agricultural processes in all the a zgs has recorded about a hundred seventy miles of cracks these are found around the edges of what are known as subsidence zones they're also sometimes found where mountains reach the desert so while this one fissure may be monumentally large such features are by no means a rare occurrence in the desert a localized heavy rain meanwhile has led to the arizona chasm getting even wider this rainfall has resulted in more erosion in the already open areas of the crack as well as that the rain has made the dirt at the top of the opening collapse and this in turn has exposed more of the underground fissure to the naked eye furthermore the crack that Cooke found is destined to get much bigger or at least become more visible as the geologists put it I'm sure the length of this fissure will increase over time that we're only seeing the surface crack of what collapsed and that the underlying fissure is longer so while this crack certainly looks impressive if there's a larger cavity underneath it may be best to stick to viewing the drone footage rather than venturing out it in the desert of Pinal County to get a closer inspection please share this video with your friends below [Music] [Music]

Channel: watchJojo

Views: 2,639,577

Rating: 4.3056831 out of 5

Keywords: watchjojo, meteor crater, tectonic plates, arizona desert, arizona history, arizona earthquake, arizona, geology, meteor crater arizona, tectonic plates moving, a new ocean is forming in africa, africa breaking apart, african continent split, african tectonic plate movement, canyon lake az, flagstaff arizona, haboob, meteor found, new ocean in africa, supervolcano yellowstone park, tectonic plates moving footage, yellowstone national park volcano, arizona timeless tourist

Id: 6841bFyEHwQ

Length: 7min 2sec (422 seconds)

Published: Thu May 17 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/garion911]

Pinal county is more than just between Casa Grande and Tucson. I'm north of Casa Grande, and in Pinal (city of Maricopa specifically)

[u/[deleted]]

“Arid wasteland”? Piss off, narrator dude!

[u/baconscoutaz]

https://www.livescience.com/57663-giant-crack-opens-in-arizona-desert.html

[u/Mudblood2000]

Tldw: cracks form in the ground where local farmers deplete the ground water

[u/charliegriefer]

Queue the "your momma" jokes.

[u/[deleted]]

Isn’t this how that movie “This is the end” started

[u/Manchurainprez]

Honestly not uncommon in the desert

[u/Aridzona]

Here is a map of known fissures in Arizona: https://www.americangeosciences.org/critical-issues/maps/arizona-fissures-map

[u/Kbudz]

I live in pinal.. so where is this?