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Everyone knows there are five oceans: the Pacific, the Atlantic, the Cold One, the Other

One, and the One People Forget About… but five oceans isn't cool.

You know what's cool?

Fanny packs—wait that's not right.

Six oceans... six oceans is cool--and what if I told you that for the low low price of

$12.99 per month, I could get you a sixth ocean.

I mean you'll have to wait like 10 million years and the $12.99 isn't really necessary

for the ocean, but I'm short on cash and I need to buy a new fanny pack.

To understand how this sixth ocean might form, we need to do what privileged white kids trying

to get into Harvard do: go to Africa.

Specifically, to a far away place called the Afar Region, a part of Ethiopia that's home

to a meeting of three tectonic plates.

Tectonic plates, if you don't know, are the big pieces of the earth's crust that

slowly move and sometimes make earthquakes and stuff.

To illustrate, if you imagine the earth is a grape, tectonic plates are like if that

grape had big pieces of the earth's crust on it that slowly move and sometimes make

earthquakes and stuff.

Here, in the Afar Region, we can see the meeting of the Arabian Plate to the North, the Nubian

Plate to the West, and the Somali Plate to the East, which create a Y-shaped intersection

almost as volatile as the ones Google draws with dotted lines.

The problem is that the plates are moving—the Somali plate is slowly headed southeast, towards

the Indian and Australian plates, and the Arabian plate is slowly headed north, towards

the Eurasian plate, where it will eventually close the Persian gulf, meaning Saudi Arabia

and Iran will eventually have a land border, which I'm sure will go great and be celebrated

with an extra-special fireworks show.

This tectonic movement has formed what's called “the Great Rift Valley” because

of, you know, all the rifts and stuff: there's the Red Sea Rift to the west, the Aden Ridge

to the east, the East African Rift to the south, and the Oculus Rift, in stores now

for only $299 plus shipping and handling.

The East African Rift, though, is the key to the potential new ocean.

It's what's called a continental rift, a term that currently holds the record for

most esoteric geological phenomenon to ever be the basis of a children's movie.

Basically, a continental rift is where two tectonic plates that make up a single continent

begin to separate—in this case, the Nubian and Somali plates, which together make up

Africa.

If they keep separating, the continental rift may turn into what's called an oceanic spreading

ridge: essentially, once the plates move far enough apart, they'll form a big crack,

which will allow magma to flow up from beneath them, where it will cool and create a new

ocean floor, continuing until Africa has split into Africa: Original Flavor and Africa 2:

Electric Boogaloo, and a new ocean will flow between the newly separated mini-continents.

But you shouldn't get out your swim trunks, sunscreen, and Aquaman traps just yet: it'll

be millions of years before this sixth ocean—which I'm proposing we call either Ocean's 6,

6 Fast 6 Furious, or Ocean and the Chipmunks: The Sixquel—forms.

In the meantime, though, the plates' slow separation has led to East Africa being home

to a set of geological phenomena that are, much like the Facebook algorithm, equal parts

fascinating and terrifying.

There's Erta Ale, a massive volcano in Ethiopia which is home to the world's longest-lasting

lava lake and is almost certainly a Fire Nation base; there's Lake Tanganyika, the world's

second-deepest lake, and home to the Goliath Tiger Fish, which looks like if a largemouth

bass had a baby with the clown from It; and there's also a bunch of giant, tens-of-miles-long

cracks in the ground in Ethiopia and Kenya that look like CGI portals to the underworld.

The point is, and there's no easy way to say this, but the plates are separating.

It's not that they don't love each other, and it's not that they don't love you,

but they just need some space.

The main reason for this is something called the Afar plume.

Unlike Jafar's gloom, which is the main source of conflict in the direct-to-video

Aladdin sequel, the Afar plume is a part of the Earth's mantle that has been heated

by underground magma.

If you've ever stolen a hot air balloon or tooted in the pool—except, don't fact

check me on that second one—you'll know that heat tends to make things rise, which

is exactly what happened to the crust above the magma, which eventually rose so much that

it split, thus creating the rift valleys.

It's worth mentioning that there's still some debate over whether or not the new ocean

really will form.

Some scientists say that the Arabian and Somali plates may not move enough to create an oceanic

spreading ridge, while other scientists say that if I keep refusing to eat anything other

than Flamin' Hot Cheetos, I will die.

That's not related, but it does keep me up at night.

Anyways, whether the new ocean forms or not, we're all going to be dead in 100 years

regardless, either from climate change, flamin' hot Cheetos, or both, so I say we should just

be grateful for the oceans we've got, except for the Southern Ocean, which I'm almost

positive is fake ocean invented by the Ocean Lobby to sell more waves.

While there might be a new ocean forming, it's super important that right now, we

preserve the ones we've already got.

Good news for you: preserving oceans is one of the many charitable causes you can support

by using Tab for a Cause.

Tab for a Cause is kind of an unbelievably good deal: it's a browser extension that

lets you generate free money—yes, free money—that goes to charitable causes of your choosing.

Every time you open a new tab, before you type in the URL you want to go to, you'll

see a few small ads in the corner of your browser.

The money from those ads is then given to charitable organizations—and so far, with

just those little ads, Tabbers have raised nearly a million dollars for worthy causes.

What's more, you know it's legit thanks to their transparent financial reports showing

where the money comes from and goes.

So if you want to start making the world just a tiny bit better every time you open up a

tab, you can spend less than 30 seconds downloading the browser extension at tab.gladly.io/HAI.