A fault-finding race to the bottom

A fault-finding race to the bottom

by Karl Sorensen

Three University of Michigan geologists this fall will start drilling almost a mile into New Zealand's earthquake epicenter, the Alpine Fault, to learn "why some faults are more earthquake-prone than others," explains Dr. Ben van der Pluijm in Science Daily. Led by U-M's Dept. of Earth & Environmental Sciences, the $2.5-million, 'Deep Fault Drilling Project' is expected to start in November and last roughly six weeks. The research team strongly believes that the Alpine Fault is due for another big earthquake in the next 50 years.

"[Any] information we can extract from these clays [will be] remarkably rich" says Austin Boles, team member and research assistant.  Find out more here.