After being tossed about and damaged by the tsunami that devastated northeastern Japan on 11 March, Japans drilling ship the Chikyu has been given an especially fitting assignment: to drill into the fault zone and take temperature measurements near the epicentre of the magnitude-9.0 Tohoku earthquake that caused the tsunami. It will be the first time that researchers have drilled into an underwater fault soon after a quake. The aim of the exercise is to solve a decades-old mystery about the part that friction plays in such an event. This should help scientists to understand why some faults are more likely than others to cause tsunamis — in this case, one that ultimately claimed more than 23,000 lives. "It would be a great disservice to society if we did not learn as much as possible from the fault zone heated by this huge earthquake," says Kiyoshi Suyehiro, president and chief executive of the management group of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP). Following its initial approval of the proposal in September, the IODP has now confirmed that funding is available for the Chikyu to set sail in April and drill at a site south of the quakes epicentre (see map).
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