Over the past 1,300 years, the Nankai Trough, the 500-mile-long boundary between two tectonic plates off the southwestern coast of Japan, has been one of the world’s most active tsunami hotspots. Now an international team of scientists has embarked on a multiyear project to drill four miles down into the heart of this subterranean wave machine. The Nankai Trough Seismogenic Zone Experiment, called Nantroseize, will be the first attempt to penetrate a tsunami-generating hotspot and could help scientists understand the source of the huge swells. “We can monitor the ocean all we want, but we’ll never understand why some earthquakes produce tsunamis and why others do not until we understand how faults work,” says geophysicist Nathan Bangs of the University of Texas.

This Saturday, Japan launched a satellite, Kizuna. If all goes well, starting in July Kizuna will provide commercial users with the fastest Internet on Earth. Less speedy is the faster-than-fiber-optic connection speeds that the average user can access with just an 18-inch-wide dish. Those speeds will be available to offices and homes in remote areas, places that don’t have the necessary telecommunications infrastructure.