Question: What would be more fascinating - finding a cure for Ebola or knowing exactly when any volcano will erupt?

Joshaniel Cooper answered on 12 Nov 2014:

I think that currently finding a cure for ebola would be great, since so many people are dying from it and very few people have died from volcanoes. However, before ebola there were other really bad diseases, and if we do find a cure (and I think some scientists are getting pretty close) there will probably be a different disease after which kills lots of people. Fighting diseases is an ongoing battle and I don’t think that we will ever have a cure for everything, but by watching volcanoes very carefully I believe scientists can already tell roughly when they will erupt and evacuate people nearby, so by developing new techniques or monitoring more volcanoes we can already reduce the risk from them.