Mount Etna may not be a "real" volcano and "could be closer to a giant hot spring"

Etna, one of the world’s biggest and most powerful volcanoes, may have more in common with a giant hot spring than a volcano, a scientist has claimed. Long classed as a stratovolcano, the 3,350 metre-high mountain on the popular holiday island of Sicily also spews out some seven million tonnes of steam, carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide every year. In a report published in the New Scientist, Professor Ferlito explains the widely-believed theory that the steam, carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide produced from Etna's eruptions are released from magma as it rises to the surface. But he questions the validity of this conventional explanation, arguing for it to be true, Mount Etna would need to erupt ten times more lava than it already does.