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Photo credit: ŠJ Bernhardt / HartRAO
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Their task: track the history of our planet 200 million years into the past. Their goal: better planning for the future. Three teams of German and South African scientists from more than a dozen universities and institutes have come together in an extraordinary project, "Inkaba ye Africa" - sometimes translated as "from the centre of Africa".
They intend to understand southern Africa from the inside out. They are
already surveying a ice cream cone-shaped section of the planet, starting
with its hot melted heart and moving up through the surface of land and sea.
But it doesn't end there. They continue through the atmosphere and out into space, in order to gain new insights into this particular neighbourhood on the third rock from the sun.
It's an ambitious effort, utilising an enormous array of talent, and the
only one of its kind in the world.
"The whole project is exciting to me because I'm interested in all
different
types of science," says Dr Ludwig Combrinck of the Hartebeesthoek Radio
Astronomy Observatory, one of many scientists working on Inkaba ye Africa.
"Because it's multi-disciplinary, it paints a much bigger and more complete
picture than otherwise. And we're discovering overlap, where one science
supports another."
This would be intriguing research anywhere in the world. And the German
scientists have the skills and resources - including more than ten million
Euros in their budget - to go anywhere. Why South Africa?
Because, according to people like Robert Trumbull of the
GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam, the prestigious German earth sciences centre,
we live in the best natural laboratory in the world.
Both Dr Combrinck and Professor Trumbull will discuss Inkaba ye Africa in public talks at the four-day-long International Science, Innovation and Technology Exhibition in September at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg.
Southern Africa, it seems, is fascinating because it's so consistent. Our
solid outer rocky shell preserves a nearly un-interrupted history of more
than 3.5 billion years. Beneath our feet lies the longest, best-preserved
geological record, quite literally, on Earth. Another big incentive: our
natural "drill-holes," which dwarf man's puny mining shafts, plunging
some
250 kilometres deep into the earth to bring up buried treasure - including
diamonds.
Off the coast, some Inkaba ye Africa scientists are deciphering complex
ocean currents which have evolved over 120 million years. Others puzzle over
the rapid decline of the earth's once-powerful magnetic field over Southern
Africa. The drop is causing lethal high-energy radiation from outer space to
wreak havoc with satellites and aircraft communications, another field of
enormous interest.
Inkaba ye Africa ranges from tsunami wave networks to global positioning
satellites, from mapping the ocean floor to monitoring the slow migration of
Gauteng, heading northeast at two centimetres a year.
It's our world. We need Inkaba ye Africa to understand it.
More information:
http://www.hartrao.ac.za/inkaba
* This article originally appeared in shortened form on The Star newspaper on 20/09/06.
* http://web.uct.ac.za/depts/cigces/InkabaWeb
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