Question: as you try to find out what makes volcanoes work do you think that you could maybe find somthing to stop them from erupting?

David Pyle answered on 11 Mar 2011:

A good question – and one that I was asked to solve during the Icelandic eruption last year!

Actually, the short answer is ‘No’ – we can’t stop volcanoes from erupting. But we can do a better job of working when they might erupt in the future (to give warnings); and we can try and understand what will happen when they do erupt, so that we can reduce the risks to people, and society, when eruptions happen.

The reason that we can’t stop volcanoes from erupting is that they are just one small part of Earth’s ‘heat engine’. Earth is still cooling, as it has been for many billions of years. There’s plenty more heat left – stored in the latent heat of the molten core (this will be released as it freezes), and in the radioactive elements (uranium, thorium, potassium) in the Earth’s crust. At the moment the Earth is just hot enough that it can melt quite easily, particularly below areas where the Earth’s plates are pulling apart; or in areas where the Earth’s plates are sinking back down into the interior. The trouble with molten rock is that it is usually less dense (or lighter) than solid rock – at least where it forms – so melt will always tend to rise towards the surface, until it either freezes, or erupts to form a volcano,