The Watchers team and our contributors bring the latest on extreme weather, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, space weather, and all things science. We're all about making sense of the natural world and keeping you informed on what’s happening. Got a tip or a question? Hit us up using the form at newstips!
Cape Town, South Africa's seat of Parliament and the legislative capital, is enduring its worst drought in over a century and severe water crisis. This forced officials to impose strict Level 4 water restrictions, effective as of Thursday, June 1, 2017. While…
Cassini mission scientists found evidence that Saturn's icy, ocean-bearing moon Enceladus may have tipped over in the distant past. Its spin axis, the line through the north and south poles, has reoriented, possibly due to a collision with a smaller body such as…
Heavy rainfall caused severe flash floods in western Turkey on May 29, 2017, especially in the city of Izmir in Izmir Province whose streets quickly turned into raging rivers. Floodwaters flooded numerous houses, destroyed city's infrastructure and swept away a…
An impressive tornado hit the Mexican state of Chihuahua on Tuesday, May 30, 2017, and was witnessed and recorded by numerous people. On the same day, another tornado hit the state of Puebla, knocking down 27 trees and damaging several cars. Meanwhile, a low…
New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) has released a new database and interactive map that enables users to search through scientific records of paleotsunamis that affected New Zealand shores. Records date back to pre-historic…
NASA’s Juno mission, led by Southwest Research Institute’s Dr. Scott Bolton, is rewriting what scientists thought they knew about Jupiter specifically, and gas giants in general, according to a pair of Science papers released today. The Juno spacecraft…
In human history, the transition from hunting and gathering to farming is a significant one. As such, hunter-gatherers and farmers are usually thought about as two entirely different sets of people. But researchers reporting new ancient DNA evidence in Current…
Researchers from North Carolina State University have discovered a technique for controlling light with electric fields. “Our method is similar to the technique used to provide the computing capabilities of computers,” says Linyou Cao, an assistant…
The emerging discipline of space meteorology aims to reliably predict solar flares so that we may better guard against their effects. Using 3D numerical models1, an international team headed by Etienne Pariat, a researcher at LESIA (Observatoire de Paris / CNRS /…
Very low frequency, or VLF, radio communications have been found to interact with particles in space, affecting how and where they move. At times, these interactions can create a barrier around Earth against natural high energy particle radiation in space. VLF…
