The drilling project at New Zealand’s Alpine Fault is the first to investigate a major fault that is due to rupture in a big earthquake in coming decades.
John Townend/Victoria University of Wellington, CC BY-SA
An international team that drilled almost a kilometre deep into New Zealand’s Alpine Fault, which is expected to rupture in a major earthquake in the next decades, has found extremely hot temperatures and high fluid pressures. 
Our findings, published today in Nature, describe these surprising underground conditions. They have broad implications for understanding what happens in the buildup to a major earthquake, and may represent the discovery of a new type of geothermal energy resource.
