Earthquakes/Volcanoes

[Wilma]

How many newsworthy earthquakes have occurred since the one in Haiti? 

Do you think that the earthquakes are relevant to the volcano eruption? 

Do you think that maybe the volcano eruption might slow down the frequency of the earthquakes?

[Janet Harrington]

I don't know the answer to any of those questions, but I just looked at msnbc.com and looked at slides from a slideshow called "Dirty Lightening".  Very good pictures of the volcano in Iceland.

[jensarlou]

Wilma, I just watched a show on the History Channel about this very topic.  It is a very hotly contested subject between scientists as whether volcanos cause earthquakes or vice versa.  But history has proved, at least in the case of Mount Vesuvius in Italy, that every eruption over the past thousand years was preceded by an earthquake.  They said it has a unique history of inhabitation around the vocano for over a thousand years so there is excellent documentation of eruptions.  So they are currently monitoring the area for earthquake activity again to see if it triggers another eruption.  Scientists are saying that it may not happen within a few days or a few weeks but a few months.  But in the frame of time, even a few months is a short period of time.  In the least it is a very interesting topic.
Andrea