Ice Lappedic Volcano News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Are going and most of the news, unfortunately, is bad. >> yeah, hey, rick, are you at all concerned about a nearby dormant volcano erupting as well? >> yes, katla nearby has famously erupted in concert with this volcano and when it does it sort of often is the more energetic long lived kind of event. so that's kind of scary, too. but so far i don't think there's much evidence of that that i've seen discussed anyway. it's always possible. >> sure. hey, rick, real quick, health hazards. what are the top concerns from your vantage point? >> the famous thing about icelandic eruptions is fluorine i...

That would be pretty nice. but it's very difficult to say. >> what about we've heard about cloud seeding. that's the process where you attempt to stimulate precipitation, but i'm wondering is there anything scientist cans do to alter the activity of volcano or the ash patterns in the skies? >> that's an interesting question. people talk about this occasionally but people are sort of afraid to approach the sleeping giants and sort of tamper with them. first of all, what if it did something unexpected and negative and you'd sort of be blamed. the other side of it is it's a giant, powerful force....

>> well, you say years and you're not exaggerating. in 1821 the same volcano managed to erupt for more than a year. were the conditions there that would lead to that? is there something you can look at internally? look at events around the world that might tell you anything about how long this will last? >> we do that at the smithsonian. we have a big database of eruptions. the average life of an eruption is about seven weeks. that's a huge average. some last only a few hours and some go on for centuries. so it's an average of a lot of numbers and i would say that year of eruption is probably ...

Make this very relevant and not just a big mountain of information and i should say a lot of information that's kind of mundane on twitter like i'm eating a bagel right now. i think that's cool. that kind of stuff. but all of that stuff is useful, light breast cancer of congress believes because it will give a snapshot in the future and currently of what people are thinking, what they're saying online, and all that information will be going to the library of congress in electronic form indefinitely. >> all right. cecilia king, i will tweet back my thanks and thank you right here as well. thank...