This week Stuff from the Science Lab talked about all the different ways volcanoes can kill you. (Image courtesy InterNewtwork Media/Photodisc/Getty Images)

Unless you’ve been making like an extremophile and hiding at the bottom of a volcano lately, you would have been hard-pressed not to learn a little bit about the Eyjafjallajökull eruption this month. It’s continuing to raise a ruckus, according to the Iceland Meteorological Office. The agency reports that booming sounds were heard in Hvolsvöllur, which is about 20 miles (32 kilometers) west of the eruption site, this week.

Surprisingly though, the impressive geological phenomena had very little impact on public health, aside from keeping Europeans with respiratory conditions on higher alert than usual. So in case you were wondering about the ways in which volcanoes might lead to a person’s untimely demise, Robert and I filled you in on that very subject this week. Hint: None of them has to do with an airplane spiraling toward the Earth thanks to engines overloaded by ash.

When scientists aren’t busy running from lava — and some day they may not be if geochemists figure out how to successfully stop lava in its tracks by throwing (limestone) rocks at it — they’re busy with other projects, like figuring out how old the interesting stuff they dig up is. As a group, scientists aren’t terribly fond of throwing out random guesses, like carnies trying to come within a couple of years of your actual age, so they employ carbon dating, the subject of our other podcast this week and a request from Matt Frederick, all-around talented man and esteemed co-host of Stuff They Don’t Want You to Know and the Coolest Stuff on the Planet. See, RL and I do hear you guys when you submit ideas. Keep them coming. One handy way to do that is to follow Stuff from the Science Lab on Twitter or Facebook.