I bet this was related with the earthquake in Japan. Pressure under the crust is high in that region. As the pressure builds deep it pushes against the harder crust. Volcanoes alleviate pressure well but its confined to a specific point, this can help but is obviously location limited. Pressure is always increasing and local areas can start trying to swell. This swelling can shake the earth if something gives under this pressure. The cracks from earthquakes are a result of the swelling and the hard ground giving. imagine a balloon with plaster or any hard shell around it. if pressure was to increase it would swell and the plaster or shell would give and expose cracks. This is the way it works. Plate tectonics or saying that two plate rubbing and such isnt the story. The plates are more dense crust and they are stronger so when swelling occurs the "plate" is more secure than the "lines" dividing them. These "fault lines" are nothing but less dense space between the plates. Just as in the balloon example when the swelling causes cracks. In the earth cracks are cooled and then becomes less dense rifts or fault lines to which the plates appear divided. See in this way you can understand why the ground cracks even when its not on a fault line as even the more dense plates cannot withstand massive amounts of pressure. The everyday pressure can effect the less dense "fault lines" with much ease, when there is an abundance of pressure even the dense matter "plates" will break and this massive result can easily push the less dense "fault lines" even beneath one another.

This is my view of the world, and it is absolute. I cannot express enough the disappointment once i discovered the way that there is no one really searching for truth when it comes to science. The politics have turned it into a modern religion. In every field you will find things dont add up, but that doesnt matter. What matters is "So as its written therefore its true". Once its written, its nearly impossible to change.

This is when i came to the absolute conclusion and my statement to the world, "The truth is another lie." In this i have settled, smart ppl are nothing more than ppl who can memorize loads of made up words on made up systems, built on more made up systems. Truly intelligent people are in the mad house, insane because they cant exist with a world of complete fantasy. Civilization, and all making, is the result of a huge amounts of imagination from the many who lived before us. Most of us think to be modern is different, its not. Every civilization was built in the same way as ours. Religion has a huge impact on the results and can be seen when looking back at civilizations lost in time. With science as our new religion the impact is huge, and the illusion is we are different. But we are not. We are still boys and girls playing in a giant playground.

What would the inhabitants of Cyrodiil really know about their world? What would the Imperial scientists be able to deduce about their world by observation and measurement - assuming they were quite intelligent?

Chemist A. Graham Cairns-Smith of the University of Glasgow sees clay as a solution to the mystery of how simple organics made the leap all the way to self-replicating genetic material. In fact, Cairns-Smith sees clay itself as the first genetic substance, what he calls a crystal gene.

Clay minerals, he explains, are crystals formed from the weathering of rocks by water. And clay, like any crystal, grows by itself-- think of crystals of frost expanding on a windowpane. Crystals, in other words, self-replicate. So if self-replication is the key, life did not start with organic molecules. Life started with crystals. That is, it started with clay.

It’s not a new idea--the Bible proposed it long ago, in a slightly different form. But in Cairns-Smith’s hands the notion takes on an evocative modern flavor. With clay, I’m advocating an earlier genetic material that is fundamentally different from DNA and RNA, he says. You needed a previous stage of evolution in which the present means of evolution was itself evolving.

Again, picture a hydrothermal vent, with organic compounds settling on clay crystals lining the fissures. But this clay was no inert surface upon which organic reactions happened to take place--it was living, growing, even assisting those reactions. As the crystals grew, they developed nooks and crannies that were a perfect fit for the organic molecules rising in the swell of water. As snugly as pegs settling into holes in a pegboard, these molecules made themselves at home in this surface. Once there, they reacted with other molecules comfortably ensconced in niches next door. Because the positioning was so precise, similar reactions could occur over and over again. The crystals, then, actually catalyzed the formation of new organic compounds.

In time the organics evolved into RNA, which, with its strong interlocking structure, returned the favor, helping out the growing clay crystals. I don’t think RNA’s genetic function came first, Cairns-Smith says. My guess is that at first it had a structural function. It helped stick the crystals together. Finally, as it became a self-replicating molecule, RNA jettisoned its clay scaffolding. And early life struck out on its own.

This scenario, attractive as it may seem, is--like so many others--too farfetched for Miller. It’s not that I don’t want to entertain new ideas--that’s fine, he says. The question is, does this chemistry work? Actually work in the lab? Either it does or it doesn’t. His point is well taken. Whatever else may be said about Miller’s ideas, his experiments worked. Talk, even informed talk, is cheap. If they’re to have an impact comparable to Miller’s, these champions of crystals and vents and interstellar particles must demonstrate their scenarios.

But how? You can’t try to make early life at existing hot springs--they’re already replete with bacteria and other life-forms, so the environment just can’t be the same as it was on the primordial planet. And re-creating an ancient hydrothermal vent in the lab is a mind-boggling prospect. Still, vent researchers are busily conducting experiments designed to do just that. Elsewhere, Chyba is collaborating with Carl Sagan and others in an attempt to nail down the possible link between extraterrestrial objects and the origin of life. And Cairns-Smith is investigating the chemical relationships between minerals and organic compounds.