Volcanoes are tricky: While we can generally tell where a volcano might erupt, we have a much harder time knowing when that might happen. This is because most volcanoes only have one vent—the place from which they erupt—so we can at least know where danger will strike if it erupts.
Mt. Etna in Sicily, though, has numerous vents, and it is constantly making new vents and shifting from one to another.
Etna is unique among volcanoes, and that makes it one of the most studied volcanoes in the world. Because of the speed with which it creates new vents, scientists can observe evolutionary processes that might otherwise take decades or centuries in the span of a few years. This makes it a very valuable specimen, but it still holds a lot of mysteries.
The first big mystery is why Mt. Etna keeps creating these new vents and how we might be able to predict where they might occur. There seems to be some instability on its eastern flank, which might help explain the why vents typically seem to form there, but it doesn’t help with the when. People living near Mt. Etna have more to worry about than people living near other volcanoes because they don’t know where new vents might spring up and when those vents might become active.
Being able to predict where vents will arise and when they will erupt would not only benefit the people living near Mt. Etna, but it would help to further scientific understanding of geology in general, and volcanoes in particular.
The more scientists can learn about the internal working of volcanoes, the better the chances of accurately predicting when they will erupt as well. We can’t do anything to stop volcanoes, but their destructive capability means that we do need to know how to react to them, and, if possible, how to prepare for eruptions.