Giant Rift In Africa Will Create a New Ocean 168
Hugh Pickens writes "Researchers at the University of Rochester believe that a 35-mile rift in the desert of Ethiopia will likely become a new ocean in a million years or so, connecting the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden. Using newly gathered seismic data, researchers have reconstructed how the rift tore open along its entire 35-mile length in just days. Dabbahu, a volcano at the northern end of the rift, erupted first, then magma pushed up through the middle of the rift area and began 'unzipping' the rift in both directions. 'We know that seafloor ridges are created by a similar intrusion of magma into a rift, but we never knew that a huge length of the ridge could break open at once like this,' says Cindy Ebinger, professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Rochester. The results show that highly active volcanic boundaries along the edges of tectonic ocean plates may suddenly break apart in large sections, instead of in bits, as the leading theory had previously held. The sudden large-scale events pose a much more serious hazard to populations living near the rift than would several smaller events."
Scam coming in your inbox today! (Score:5, Funny)
BUY beachfront property NOW!
After a while* you'll be sitting on a goldmine!
(* definition of "while" might be different in your state)
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Surfin' Ethiopia! (Score:5, Funny)
If everybody had an ocean
Across the desert sands,
Then everybody'd be surfin'
Like Ethiop-I-A
You'd see 'em wearin' their baggies
Huarachi sandals, too
A bushy bushy blonde hairdo
Surfin' Africa.
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In order to get the rhyme and meter to work, I'd change "Ethiopia" to "Ethiopians". Other than that, well done, sir!
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BUY beachfront property NOW!
After a while* you'll be sitting on a goldmine!
There was a documentary [imdb.com] on this business strategy a while ago.
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SOLVE global warming? I was just starting to scan down for the post that BLAMES global warming!
Hell, I feel obligated to make the assertion now.
IT'S ALL THE FAULT OF BUSH AND BIG OIL!!! GO GREEN TODAY!! Help prevent the desert from falling into the ocean!
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"In a million years or so" (Score:5, Funny)
Nothing to see here folks... move along. Come back in a million years or so.
What's next? Another story about Duke Nukem Forever?
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Actually, DNF is really really really officially dead. I have a screenshot from the model and lighting guys from right before they turned off the lights and closed down the offices. It's really sad.
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Pfft, a million years? Clearly these are the birth pangs of the cataclysm of 2012.
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This Friday! On SyFy! A rift opens in Sheffield! (Score:2)
Swallowing up thousands of hectares of the English countryside! With no warning! On the Most Dangerous Cheesiest Night on Television!
Noah's flood and a massive deluge (Score:2, Interesting)
There is a theory that the flood story of Noah is based on the actual deluge which created the Black Sea.
Before the Flood, this area was simply a low-lying area, but approximately 5000 years ago waters from the Mediterranean Sea spilled over the Bosporus and rapidly filled the Black Sea area within days. The massive influx of water wiped out many local civilizations and probably gave rise to the Flood legend.
If this rift is going to become a new ocean, the water must come from somewhere. If it all comes at
Re:Noah's flood and a massive deluge (Score:5, Informative)
Except that it didn't happen in just a few days....
It is still a nice theory though... just not as dramatic.
Another nice theory is that the 'flood' was just a local one.
Not so long ago the world ended at the horizon for most people since they never traveled far from home.
And since a lot of civilizations started in river deltas (which tend to flood now and then) it is not a surprise that many religions contain some flooding in their myths.
Re:Noah's flood and a massive deluge (Score:5, Interesting)
Except that it didn't happen in just a few days....
There are fairly mainstream theories that as the Ice Age ended, ice deposits in the Arctic melted into enormous lakes. Really enormous lakes. All that was holding this water in was ice. When finally the ice holding all this water in melted and cracked, all that water was released in a sudden catastrophic event. Rivers to dwarf anything we have today. Sea levels globally rising by several metres, in a matter of days.
I was always dubious about the idea that a gradual rise in sea levels would result in all those deluge myths worldwide (Atlantis, Cantre'r Gwaelod, Noah, etc.). I'm much more convinced if it can be sudden. That would certainly enter into oral history.
Unfortunately the best source I can offer right now is the Beringia Museum in Whitehorse, British Columbia. A bit of a trek for most people. I guess if I were to Google a bit I could find something online, but hey, I ain't gonna.
Re:Noah's flood and a massive deluge (Score:5, Informative)
The geologic evidence is pretty clear that these huge "Missoula Floods" repeatedly blew through the southeast quadrant of Washington State, sometimes covering about a third of the state.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missoula_Floods
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Why don't we just build a time viewer, then we don't have to keep guessing.
We can just peer through something like a tv and see what happened.
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That darn squirrel and his acorn.
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there was an 1800's geologist in the US who studied strange markings on the great plains. his theory was that at the end of the last ice age the ice burst and a huge avalanche of water hit the ground going so fast that it created water tornadoes that tore up the ground. the kids cartoon Ice Age copied his theory
Re:Noah's flood and a massive deluge (Score:5, Interesting)
I believe you might be referring to the Channeled Scablands [wikipedia.org] in Washington State? I remember seeing a documentary about that. Interesting stuff. The research happened a bit later than the 1800s, unless you're referring to something else. More pictures and information [uwsp.edu].
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PBS had a fairly (to my laymen eyes) informative and accessible NOVA [pbs.org] episode concerning the megaflood.
Poetic language (Score:2)
Surely we don't have to create new terms for things we already have words for.
It's called "poetic language". Back in the day, when verse was based on alliteration as opposed to rhyme, these new terms were called kennings [wikipedia.org].
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avalanche of water = flood?
No, not really. If anything, it would be closer to a tsunami than a flood. It would be a enormous amount of water moving very rapidly...enough to transform the landscape, doing way more damage than a tsunami. Further more, a tsunami is the water being pushed by displacement, where as these type of events have a massive surge of water moving under the force of gravity (much like an avalanche does).
I suppose the definition of flood does cover such an event, but it's on a scale much larger than what we typical
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Isn't Whitehorse in the Yukon territory, not BC?
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My mistake. It had been a long drive :)
Whitehorse, Yukon (Score:3, Informative)
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As I followed up another correction - my mistake.
If it's any consolation, I bloody loved Yukon.
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Yeah, I saw a movie about this once. Ice Age 2 I think it was called...
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No, the GP is entirely correct.
Atlantis was a story made up by Plato in his dialogs to make a rhetorical point. It doesn't even qualify as a "myth". Either way, its story bears no resemblance whatsoever to the story of Noah (other than there was water involved I suppose). That Welsh myth might be similar to Plato's story, but that means it also bears no resemblance whatsoever to Noah's flood.
There are some similarities between the Jewish flood myth and the Sumerian one. However, the two peoples lived aw
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Oh, and all these stories are myths. They aren't history.
What's suggested is that they're myths grounded in events that happened at some point in human history. If the sea level rose suddenly, there would, 50 years later, be *lots* of old people telling rapt children "We had a big settlement, but one day there was a great flood, and now that settlement is under the sea".
Over centuries, you'd get embellishments to make the fully formed myths that exist to this day.
I take your point about Plato and Atlantis, although I suspect he'd have been informed by an existing
A not so massive deluge (Score:2)
If you're talking about the Missoula Floods, they couldn't have contributed "several meters" of sea level rise. Lake Missoula only had a volume of about 2200 cubic kilometers. The Greenland ice sheet (2.8 million cubic kilometers) is thought to hold an extra 7 meters worth of sea level. Using that scaling factor and ignoring density differences between water and ice, that works out to about 0.5 centimeters of potential sea level rise from Lake Missoula. And it's also contested whether the whole lake coul
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Actually, in my other comment [slashdot.org] I completely forgot about Meltwater Pulse 1A, about 14,500 years ago. Like the last interglacial event I mentioned, MP 1A also had average sea level rise rates of 4-5 centimeters per year, except it was sustained for 500 years instead of 50.
Again, though, it wasn't a few-day deluge.
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I found this paper [doi.org] which suggests 1.4 meters of sea level rise over 500-600 years 8500 years ago, the largest freshwater pulse into the North Atlantic in 100,000 years. However, some parts of that rise were rapid and they calculate that it could have caused massive flooding around the Black and Mediterranean Seas over a period of 120 years. I wonder if that's fast enough, recent enough, and global enough to account for global flood myths. The worst effects were localized around the Black Sea which would
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If an 5 megaton underground text explosion can create a new lake, what could a massive volcanic eruption do:
Cannikin test [youtube.com]
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It's going to be even more interesting than that. The area is reatively close to the shore, and the pit is actually volcanic. Guess what happens when a big mass of water spills over and enters the pit.. Well, it's a shame this is Ethiopia and not Nigeria, because if it were the latter, it would be raining scammers after the massive steam explosion that is bound to happen there...
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If it all comes at once, we could see a massive loss of life and property, especially as the problematic area lies in some of the poorest parts of the globe. In another 5000 years, we could be debating if the Savior Adibi Christ walked with elephants!
Except this is forecast to happen in roughly a million years time, so really you would say that in 1,000,500 years there might be such debates, if we haven't been wiped out by a comet, or zombies, or all gone to live on Mars. And, of course, you're also assuming that in a million years this sea will be "in some of the poorest parts of the globe". Not sure how you can look so far ahead...
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Cleansing (Score:2)
The point being that ethnic cleansing is ok?
If you have a light-skinned actress portraying a dark-skinned character [wikipedia.org], is it "ethnic cleansing" when the actress removes her makeup?
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I heard it was a bit further back than 5000 years ago, butit still gave rise to all of the Flood legends.
In addition to the rise in water level, the new water was salty, so the fish that were in the lake and the plants would have died too. The (human) survivors of the even would have had to migrate quite a ways to find somewhere else to live, spreading the story with them.
(The story of Atlantis however probably was due to the Thera/Santorini eruption.
Re:Noah's flood and a massive deluge (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a theory that the flood story of Noah is based on the actual deluge which created the Black Sea.
No, the flood story of Noah is based on the Sumerian story of Utnapishtim. The Sumerian story of Utnapishtim may be based on the Black Sea (or even Mediterranian) inundation, but the Noah story is just a copy of the Sumerian story, with all the roles of the various Sumerian gods subsumed by a rather confused and contradictory Hebrew god.
Given the Sumerians were a river culture (think about what "Mesopotamia" means) it is at least as plausible that the Sumerian flood story, which is what the biblical flood story is based on, arose from plausible fears of a great innundation, much as zombie stories arise today from a plausible fear of Republicans.
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>>No, the flood story of Noah is based on the Sumerian story of Utnapishtim.
Yeah, those damn native Americans totally ripped off the Sumerians with their story of the flood, too. Giant canoe? How derivative!
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Given the Sumerians were a river culture (think about what "Mesopotamia" means)
You have to hand it to them, though. They laid down the law in Meso. Potamia.
Problem solved! (Score:2)
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You've missed out the "discredited" in "a discredited theory".
OK, that's maybe being a bit harsh on Ryan & Pitmann, whose ideas you refer to. Their theory was reasonable, plausible, and testable. It has been tested and found to be at the least flawed, if not completely unworkable. As I recall - and I'm only working from memory - one of the predictions of the Ryan/ Pitmann theory was that there would
Re:Noah's flood and a massive deluge (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're being too harsh on the OP. He specifically mentioned other flood stories in his post.
The simple fact is that oral stories and traditions (Christianity aside) usually have SOME basis in reality. Christianity isn't the only religion with a flood story. The Greek's also had a flood story where Zeus flooded the world. As you mention there is also the Babylonian flood story. Countless other cultures in that area have a flood story. It's not being a "Christian apologetic" to look for real events that may have inspired such stories - it's researching history.
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Yeah, Troy was thought to be a joke at one time. Some of it is made up metaphor and some things are probably fact in these stories. I cn't see where the bible would be any more or less accurate than other writings found from the period.
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Ah, the fresh smell of snide asshats in the morning, so much the better when they are willing to spout out shit without even thinking.
There are several possibilities that could account for the facts as they were presented, your two listed possibilities are not the complete set. And yes, one of those possibilities is that at least a few of the groups of people who pass down these legends are descended from people who did witness a megaflood.
No that doesn't mean that the great JC walked on water or Moses part
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Anyone who doesn't have a religious agenda to promote tends to find it pretty dang obvious that the Jewish flood story was based off the Babylonian/Sumerian one.
Sure, plenty of cultures in western Asia at the time had similar flood stories. How do you leap to the conclusion that these stories weren't based on some real event?
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Yeah, like those fundies at PBS! [pbs.org]
Or those zealots at National Geographic! [nationalgeographic.com]
Or all those bible thumpers at Columbia University! [columbia.edu] Buncha holy rollers!
poor somalis (Score:2)
the future is not much brighter
and ... Torchwood is there (Score:2)
Ohmigod don't open the rift, captain ....
Slashdot's missing statement (Score:2)
I would say that this doesn't really fall under the category of "stuff that matters".
Wrong story title (Score:5, Informative)
The big news here isn't that an ocean will form: that's old news. We've known about the the Great Rift Valley" for a long time, and that three plates are pulling apart. What's interesting is that they've confirmed part of the process that's at work. I think this story a little over-hyped. [wikipedia.org]
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Bigger news is that his anchor text for his link is 35 words long and happened in less than a day!
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Bigger news is that his anchor text for his link is 35 words long and happened in less than a day!
I know. In the past, scientists thought links of that length would take years to form. Our infrastructure is in so much peril!
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Bigger news is that his anchor text for his link is 35 words long and happened in less than a day!
Uh, the biggest news is that the event in question happened in 2005... the event is not new, but some additional rationale behind the ocean hypothesis is new.
Rising Sea Levels (Score:5, Funny)
There's the answer to rising sea levels... Divert the water into what will eventually become an ocean basin anyway.
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Also solves the drought in East Africa ;)
Poor Headline (Score:5, Informative)
The news is not that the East African rift will form a new ocean - that's been known for a few years - but that it can happen very quickly. A timescale of days for an event of that scale is really rather significant, since it means that if something like it were to happen anywhere near existing infrastructure, our ability to adapt to it would be extremely limited. Well, not until afterwards anyway.
Another geographical blunder in the article is saying that the rift will connect the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. That's because they're already connected.
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Another geographical blunder in the article is saying that the rift will connect the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. That's because they're already connected.
Yeah; I was sorta wondering what map they're using. Another channel linking the Red Se and the Gulf of Aden wouldn't really do much to either of those bodies of water, though it might sorta change property values along the length of the rift.
In any case, I've been noticing that we seem to have this sort of wide-eyed "OMG Africa is splitting apart and we
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The news is not that the East African rift will form a new ocean - that's been known for a few years
In order for an ocean to form, the plates on either side need to have somewhere to move to. That requires not only the local rift dynamics but also a shift in all the surrounding plates so they "get out of the way". I don't know of any evidence that this is happening. If others do, I'd be happy to have references.
Similarly, the nearby Red Sea was able to start spreading because the plate to the north was being subducted near Iran. But since that subduction has likely stopped, it's questionable whether the R
Meanwhile... (Score:3, Funny)
"M'gulu gulu mulugu lugulugu" (*)
"lugulugu um'gulu lulu?"
"gugu"
"gugu lulu gugu?"
"gugu kaboom"
(*) Translation:
"There's something very important I forgot to tell you."
"What?"
"Don't cross the streams."
"Why?"
"It would be bad."
Maybe (Score:2)
On a more serious note, what could an ocean and life-giving water mean for a harsh region like this? Perhaps some prosperity in the form of much needed farm land.
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Millions of Tonnes of Salt water .... would do very little
The region in question is in places very low in population simply because it is a volcanic arid wasteland .... other parts however are lush and full of life which would be wiped out by this new ocean ...
Rapid change on this scale is always bad news in the short term ... (short term measured in 1000's of years)
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Great Lakes are in a "Failed Rift" (Score:3, Interesting)
Not every rift is going to become an ocean like Atlantic. Some fail, as did the rift under the Big Lakes. Correct my rusty geology if I'm wrong.
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Sort of...2 actually...
From Wikipeida..
"It has been estimated that the foundational geology which created the conditions shaping the present day upper Great Lakes was laid from 1.1 to 1.2 billion years ago,[4][8] when two previously fused tectonic plates split apart and created the Midcontinent Rift. A valley was formed providing a basin that eventually became modern day Lake Superior. When a second fault line, the Saint Lawrence rift, formed approximately 570 million years ago,[4] the basis for Lakes Ontar
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Not every rift is going to become an ocean like Atlantic. Some fail, as did the rift under the Big Lakes. Correct my rusty geology if I'm wrong.
I live by the Great Lakes, and I have always understood that the lakes were carved out by glaciers during the last ice age. I've never heard this failed rift explanation. What's your source for this info?
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I happen to have taken a number of college level geology courses at University of Minnesota - Duluth. My memory is a little rusty, but it is indeed true that, at least in the case of Lake Superior, it's very obvious that the lake was created by magma subsidence. The basin still has magma tubes that lead to the lake (you can see them on the shore, as they erode much slower than the surrounding rock), and you can very easily see the igneous rock layers sloping (at remarkably steep angles) towards the lake b
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It often takes several combined factors to form features like the great lakes. The glaciers played a huge role in shaping the landscape, but that's just on top of the rifting etc. I might mention also that the rifting stuff is limited to the western great lakes (particularly Superior) - lakes Erie and Ontario were formed essentially exclusively by glacial and other erosional processes. There has been a lot written on this topic - it's pretty interesting to read through the understood history of the region,
New ocean connecting what now? (Score:4, Funny)
Wow! This is a revolution [wikipedia.org]!
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There was a bit missing....
"..connecting the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden VIA A SECOND PATHWAY"
A kind of Spanning-Sea protocol
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Re:New ocean connecting what now? (Score:5, Funny)
Real State Boom!!!(10+1) (Score:2)
Land Before Time... (Score:3, Interesting)
Thanks a lot, "Researchers at the University of Rochester"...
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No need for nightmares. Africa isn't going to split up. It's just another one of those Godzilla type monsters breaking free. It should head over to Japan before starting its killing spree, with atomic bombs being dropped on it all along its path. Nothing to worry about at all.
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Maybe you'd seen "Crack in the World"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crack_in_the_world [wikipedia.org]
This was preceded by the Mohole project, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohole [wikipedia.org]
Of course, they are both wrong. Nope, when they drill too far, what'll happen? All the air will get out, and the world will go flat.
REPEAT (Score:2)
How many times is this going to be reposted?
ditto NM, AZ and NV in USA (Score:2)
That's somewhat different actually (Score:3, Interesting)
The basin and range represents continental crustal extension, which is spread out across the entire region. This is more-or-less driven by pulling on either end. Actually, the driving forces are not completely understood (which is why I'm using "more-or-less" to describe these things).
Oceanic crustal extension, on the other hand, is more-or-less being pushed apart from the center. So the rifting and so on is focused in one area - the rift zone. That's why the Mid Atlantic Ridge or the East African Rift - sp
Its time ... (Score:2)
Re:how come we have only 3 oceans? (Score:4, Informative)
We already have more than 3. Try again.
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Well, we already took the land from the "Indians", so why not the Ocean too?
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We should send explorers to go there, and plant a flag claiming the land in the name of our emperor (the reborn Jesus, Abe Lincoln, Malcom X, Michael Jackson, etc.) in the middle of the largest village we can find, just like our European ancesters did.
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There is geological evidence that the Mediterranean and Black Seas were once cut off from the rest of the worlds oceans in (relatively recent) times. Its possible that the Arctic ocean was also cut off during the ice age, but then it was more an ice shelf than an ocean/sea.Anyway in a million years we may have managed to melt all the (land supported) ice and most of africa would be underwater before the rift opens wide. On the other hand if we cause enough of a greenhouse effect, all the water could be boil
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We really only have one ocean, it's just convenient to apply different names to parts that have a large continent between them.
Although where oceans meet, you can sometimes actually see the boundary - different temperature water, currents colliding etc.
Yes, those natural boundaries move, and it's fairly arbitrary which ones we call ocean boundaries. A bit like countries, really :)